e2e testing of p2p sync

[gmaclennan]

I did some digging into testing p2p sync over a local network in (multiple) Android emulators. Unfortunately it's really hard (impossible?) because the emulators are on their own separate subnet and it's not possible to even ping them (see local networking limitations).

What we would like is to set up two or more emulators and test local network discovery and sync between them, and, if possible, simulate different network conditions. Mapeo currently does not do discovery over the internet, only local WiFi.

There are some ways around this for older versions of the Android APK, with an excellent write up by @rubdos and some details from @manojrege but it does not work with Android SDK >=25, which set up multiple networks in the emulator.

It's maybe possible to use a similar approach to above with the new networking stack, but it's much more complicated - it would need an understanding of the Android source code for networking, and understanding how Qemu works. This article might also be helpful: https://community.kde.org/KDEConnect/Android_Emulator

[gmaclennan]

I wrote to BrowserStack about support for device -> device communication in their testing environment, and they replied:

Hi Gmaclennan,

Thank you for writing in.

I have read through your query and understood your use case.

I would like to share that currently, we do not have the capability to allow 2 devices to interact with each other.
I have taken this as a feedback and will be forwarding the same to our product team as well.

Do let me know if you have more queries, I'd be happy to assist you further.

Thanks and Regards,
Tejas Watamwar
BrowserStack Support
229749:1199365

I suspect this is going to be the case with a lot of real-device automated testing, so I think our only way to test p2p sync will be to figure out how to configure the networking stack for emulators, then we can simulate network environments.

[gmaclennan]

The KDEConnect docs for Android Emulator have been recently updated and include good details about how to configure QEMU networking for broadcast packets in Android APK > 24.