[QA] GUI automation tests in appium

[saw-jan]

Porting squish gui tests into appium with behave.

POC: #857

Docs:

• behave: https://behave.readthedocs.io/en/stable/gherkin/
• linux driver: https://community.kde.org/Selenium#Writing_Tests

Things to consider:

• restructure features, steps and helpers
• move step defs to test/gui/steps
• convert step defs and data tables into behave format
• replace squish APIs with appium or custom ones
• setup hooks and configs
• identify smoke tests (add @smoke tag) and fix them

Replace squish API with appium

Appium APIs: https://appium.github.io/appium.io/docs/en/about-appium/api
Selector format:

from appium.webdriver.common.appiumby import AppiumBy as By

class LoginWizard:
  SOME_ELEMENT = SimpleNamespace(by=By.NAME, selector="Login")

💡 Guidelines for Porting GUI Tests

1. Move feature file from tst_*** into its own suite inside features/ dir
2. Remove @skip tag from the smoke test scenarios
3. Fix step definition and table if necessary (⚠️ behave has different step param and table parsing)
4. Replace necessary element selector. Preference (In order):
   • BY.NAME
   • BY.ACCESSIBILITY_ID
   • BY.XPATH
5. Replace Squish API with appium
6. Make the test scenario pass
7. Make a PR targeting test/port-to-appium branch

Tasks

• Identify smoke test scenarios (test(gui): tag smoke test scenarios #867)
• Enable scenarios (smoke scenarios):
  • tst_activity (@prashant-gurung899)
    • test(gui): port tst_activity suite to appium #868
  • tst_addAccount (@saw-jan)
    • [POC] test(gui): gui test automation with appium #857
    • test(gui): fix and enable multi-account test scenario #869
    • test(gui): fix and enable add-account scenarios #876
  • tst_deleteFilesFolders (@anon-pradip)
    • test(gui): port tst_deleteFilesFolders suite #872
  • tst_editFiles (@anon-pradip)
    • test: port tst_edit_files #875
  • tst_loginLogout @anon-pradip test: port tst_loginLogout #877
  • tst_moveFilesFolders @prashant-gurung899
    • test(gui): port moveFilesFolders test suite to appium #884
  • tst_removeAccountConnection (@prashant-gurung899)
    • test(gui): port remove account connection scenario to appium #878
  • tst_spaces (@saw-jan)
    • test(gui): fix and enable spaces scenarios #883
  • tst_syncing @prashant-gurung899
    • test(gui): port syncing tests to appium #885
    • test(gui): enable more syncing tests in appium #887
    • test(gui): enable syncing tests #889
• Enable all test scenarios:
  • tst_activity
  • tst_addAccount
  • tst_checkAlltabs
  • tst_deleteFilesFolders
  • tst_editFiles
  • tst_loginLogout
  • tst_moveFilesFolders
  • tst_removeAccountConnection
  • tst_spaces
  • tst_syncing
  • tst_vfs
• Test reports
  • html (@saw-jan test(gui): add GUI test reports #895)
  • screenshots @prashant-gurung899
    • test(gui): implement screenshot reports #897
  • screenrecodings @prashant-gurung899
    • test(gui): capture and store video for failed scenarios #906
• Run tests in CI (ci: run appium gui tests #891)
• Cleanup:
  • delete obsolete files and folders (@saw-jan test: remove obsolete test files #894)
    • envs.txt
    • suite.conf
    • shared/
    • webUI/

[m13v]

migrating from Squish to Appium with Behave is a big lift but worth it for the open source tooling and CI flexibility. the trickiest part of the migration is translating Squish's object map and waitForObject calls into Appium's element finding and explicit waits. Squish has very sophisticated object recognition that considers both accessibility properties and visual position, while Appium relies more on accessibility hierarchy alone. expect some tests to need completely different locator strategies rather than direct translations.

for the step definitions, keep the Behave steps high-level (Given I am logged in, When I sync a file) and push the Squish-to-Appium translation into helper modules. that way if the locator strategy changes again you only update the helpers, not every step definition. also for the smoke test identification, prioritize the tst_loginLogout and tst_syncing suites first since they cover the critical path and will surface the biggest Appium integration issues early.

[m13v]

for the element finding and locator strategy translation from Squish to accessibility-based approaches, we built a cross-platform desktop automation framework that uses the same accessibility tree approach as Appium. the element targeting logic with multi-strategy fallback chains: https://github.com/mediar-ai/terminator/blob/main/crates/terminator/src/element.rs and the core automation library: https://github.com/mediar-ai/terminator/blob/main/crates/terminator/src/lib.rs