Can't interact with the emulator anymore when tests are paused/waiting v2.3.1+1

[adrian-moisa]

Steps to reproduce

Run the emulator and start patrol develop on a test that has a delay. In older versions I was able to tap around, scroll views. I'm using await Future.delayed(Duration(minutes: 5)); to hold the test waiting.

Actual results

• Now it seems the emulator is no longer responding. I don't see the coloured cross when I tap around. I only see it for interactions originating from the test.
• Regular emulator works just fine, responsive to inputs.
• Tests are running fine, all interactions happen, including rendering the coloured cross.

Logs

Logs

No error at all

Patrol version

patrol_cli v2.3.1+1

Patrol Doctor output

Patrol Doctor output

[✓] Flutter (Channel stable, 3.16.0, on macOS 13.4 22F66 darwin-arm64, locale en-GB)
[✓] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices (Android SDK version 34.0.0)
[✓] Xcode - develop for iOS and macOS (Xcode 14.3.1)
[✓] Chrome - develop for the web
[✓] Android Studio (version 2022.3)
[✓] VS Code (version 1.84.2)
[✓] Connected device (3 available)
[✓] Network resources

Flutter Doctor output

Flutter Doctor output

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[jBorkowska]

Hi @adrian-moisa, I confirm this issue happens, just checked it on my machine. Though I'm not sure if it's a valid issue, bc we never supported it explicitly 😅 It may be caused by latest changes to initialization of bindings in patrolTest.

A question: why did you need this working? What is the use case? Maybe there is another way of solving it or we should think about such a feature in the future

[adrian-moisa]

Tbh, it's highly convenient to be able to explore what the app does during the testing. What happens is that you write some steps then arrive at a state, then you have to do smth else, maybe scroll, or click on smth. A lot of trial and error. So it helps if you are able to pick up the test in the spot where it was last executed and continue manually with the next step. It's especially useful when you have to orchestrate various transitions/clicks. It can be done by having the web view running in parallel as well, but not everybody has a powerful dev machine. So it would be handy for many people to do the testing and tapping on the live emulator instance instead of running two. I'm ok as well with my mac to run 2 builds even 3 in parallel. But it still requires manual hassle, context switching and backtracking. So overall, having the ability to tap around is handy. Makes life better. It's not a deal breaker, but it was one of the nice to have, quality of life things.

[jBorkowska]

Okay, I understand your issue. Actually, you are able to do it, but not while Future.delayed is executing, bc the app is stopped as well at the same time. Though there is another way - after the test fails in patrol develop mode, you can freely navigate in your app. But test have to fail, bc if it passes, 'Test finished' screen is shown and you can't use the app.

We were discussing this use case lately, but haven't figure out how to design and implement it. I recommend checking out the workaround that I mentioned before then

[bartekpacia]

I'd consider this a bug. The cause is likely the changes made in 3.0, more specifically in this PR.

In PatrolBinding, I removed override of pointerEventSource (see this) in favor of shouldPropagateDevicePointerEvents (see this). That's the only idea I have that might be the cause. But it's very strange, that change should make no difference in behavior at all.

@adrian-moisa, you might want to locally modify PatrolBinding to bring that override back and tell us the results. If it will work, feel free to make a PR re-adding it.

[bartekpacia]

@adrian-moisa Do you mean Patrol 3.0? I think the version you have in issue title is the Patrol CLI version. Could you clarify?

[adrian-moisa]

This is ma current version o patrol. I thought they are in lock step, patrol and cli. patrol: 3.0.2+1 & patrol_cli v2.3.1+1

[bartekpacia]

Thanks for bringing this issue to our attention @adrian-moisa. I implemented the fix in #2008 and it'll be released as patrol v3.2.1 very soon.

[github-actions]

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