This is another guest post from Appium contributor Jonah Stiennon. Enjoy!

Have you run into a bug in Appium that has be fixed by unfastened source contributors but hasn & # x27; t been released in an official version yet? Or peradventure you saw an exciting new feature you & # x27; d like to try out right away, rather than waiting for the adjacent published liberation?

In order to do either of these, you can run Appium code which is newer than that latest release. Appium releases hap every one to three month. In between official versions, the Appium contributor releasebetavariant, every week or so. You can install and use these beta versions, or for the very really modish code, you can run Appium from the most recent codification posted to Github.

Installing and Running a Beta variant

Appium is a Node.js undertaking hosted on npm. The latest beta edition can be installed from the commandline as follows:

npm uninstall -g appium npm install -g appium @ beta

As easy as that. The first step is to remove a previously-installed adaptation of Appium.

It should go without say that a beta variation of Appium may be less stable than an official release. Beta versions are not published without run tests first, but bugs may live, especially in new features. Testers are encouraged to try use the beta versions, andreporting bugswill ensure a better official liberation.

Appium is composed of many module, specifically one for each & quot; driver & quot; which control mobile device (xcuitest-driver, uiautomator2-driver, chrome-driver, safari-driver ...). Most new code for Appium is bestow to these driver rather than to theAppium repositoryitself. Whenever code is added to a driver, the driver is usually published to npm correct away. Each time an official Appium release is created, specific versions of each driver are selected to be include in the Appium release.

Beta releases of Appium donotspecify specific versions of drivers, so every time you install a beta version, all the drivers are update to the latest published version. If you are already using a beta variation of Appium, then all that is necessary to install new versions of the drivers is to run:

npm install -g appium @ beta

Installing Appium from Lastest Source Code

Appium freeing are published to npm, but the most late code resides in github.

First we clone the repository from github:

git clone https: //github.com/appium/appium.git

Then navigate to the new directory:

cd appium

Then install all Node.js dependencies:

Appium requires some other habituation you will need to install yourself, depending on which platform you aim to automate. These are all covered in the standard installation guides in the Appium docs and aren & # x27; t covered hither.

The Appium code can be run as follows, within the Appium code directory:

node .

We can of line, choose to run this from anywhere else:

node /path/to/appium/directory

Appium was not append to the PATH when we installed it, so run theappium command in a terminal will either fail, or run another version of Appium we hold installed. We can set theappium command to run our source code by setting an alias. Add the undermentioned codification to your shell config:

alias appium= '' node path/to/appium/directory ''

As mentioned in the subdivision about installing a beta version, the Appium task is comprised of many module, particularly all the various drivers for different platforms. When we rannpm installabove, we installed the latestpublishedversions of those drivers, institute on npm. Since we are bunk on the real latest codification from github, we may also want to entree the latest code for the one of the Appium drivers.

In order to have our local Appium root code use the latest code for a driver, we need to get the codification for the driver from github. Then we use thenpm linkcommand to tell Appium to use this codification instead of a package from npm.

As an example, here is how we & # x27; d hold our local Appium codification use the late codification for the UiAutomator2 driver:

git clone https: //github.com/appium/appium-uiautomator2-driver.git cd appium-uiautomator2-driver npm install npm link cd /path/to/appium/directory npm connectedness appium-uiautomator2-driver

We only ask to set this up once, now if get pull the latest code into the appium-uiautomator2-driver directory (or modify the code there), restarting the Appium server will mechanically include the new code.

A warning though, if we install a new variation of Appium or runnpm installit will break thisnpm linkand we & # x27; ll have to do it again.

Installing an Old Version of Appium

While we & # x27; re on the subject, you can also install and run old versions of Appium like so:

npm install appium @ 1.9.2

Substitute the version you desire alternatively of1.9.2.

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