Install AimDroid on Emulator

• UPDATE-2017-07-01: We have uploaded the modified x86 version of libart.so and libart-compiler.so. You can re-install AimDroid. You can check the coverage files at /sdcard/coverage.

The following guide is about how to setup AimDroid on an emulator on Mac OS.

There are simply five main steps.

1. Create and start a Nexus 7 virtual deivce
2. Install AimDroid
3. Reboot
4. Configure the controller
5. Run

Step 1: Create a Nexus 7 Virtual Device

1. Download and install Android Studio from https://developer.android.com/studio/index.html

2. Set $ANDROID_HOME to your SDK directory. Append $ANDROID_HOME/build-tools/<your-actual-version>/, $ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools, and $ANDROID_HOME/emulator to your $PATH

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   export ANDROID_HOME=/Users/tianxiaogu/Library/Android/sdk export PATH=$PATH:/Users/tianxiaogu/Library/Android/sdk/build-tools/25.0.3 export PATH=$PATH:/Users/tianxiaogu/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools export PATH=$PATH:/Users/tianxiaogu/Library/Android/sdk/emulator

   Note

   Remember to check the actual version of your build-tools. Mine is 25.0.3.

3. Open Android Studio, and then open AVD Manager following Menu->Tools->Android->AVD Manager. Create a Nexus 7 virtual device as follows.

   1. Open AVD Manager and click Create Virtual Device.

      

   2. In the new window, click tab Tablet and then select Nexus 7, and then click next.

      

   3. In the new window, select the recommended image (marked by red rectangle.) and then click next. You may need to click the download link first.

      

      Note

      You must select the Marshmallow (Android 6.0) x86 version image.

      1. Why Marshmallow? Becuase the current avaiable version of AimDroid is only compatible with Android 6.0, API level 23.
      2. Why x86? Because first the xposed framework has no x86_64 support (http://dl-xda.xposed.info/framework/sdk23/) and second arm based virtual devices are slow.

   4. Input a new name or just remember the default name and then click Finish.

      

   5. Finally, you can see the created virtual device.

      

4. In the command line, open the emulator from command line and enable -writable-system. Wait for the emulator to start up.

   1	emulator @Nexus_7_API_23 -writable-system

   Warning

   -writable-system is very important because Xposed needs to modify the files under /system.

Step 2: Install AimDroid.

We have provided all necessary binaries for installing the Xposed framework.

• all-in-one.zip

We have created a script (install-emulator.sh) that does the every thing but you should also know the detailed steps in case of any error.

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./install-emulator.sh

Manual Installation

1. Install Xposed.

   1 2	adb push xposed-zip /sdcard/ adb shell "cd /sdcard/xposed && sh flash-script.sh"

2. Install the Xposed Module Manager app.

   1	adb install xposed-installer-3-1-1.apk

3. Install AimDroid-ape

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   adb push ape.jar /sdcard/ adb shell mount -o rw,remount /system adb push ape /system/bin/

   Note

   The script can also be put into /sdcard/ on Android from 6.0. Here we put it in the PATH for convenient.

4. Install our modified libart.so and libart-compiler.so to collect instruction/method coverage.

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   adb push libart-compiler.so /system/lib adb push libart.so /system/lib adb shell chmod 644 /system/lib/libart.so adb shell chown root:root /system/lib/libart.so adb shell chmod 644 /system/lib/libart-compiler.so adb shell chown root:root /system/lib/libart-compiler.so

5. Install AimDroid-monitor

   1	adb install app-debug.apk

   Warning

   Open Xposed Installer and enable the MoniDroid module.

Step 3: Reboot

1. Reboot the virtual device to enable Xposed

   1	adb reboot

   Note

   During reboot, all apps will be recompiled by the AOT compiler of the ART again. This would take several minutes.

Step 4: Configure the Controller

AimDroid Controller relies on a configuration file configure.json. You can edit the configure.json in the all-in-one folder.

Here is a sample of configuration file.

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{
    "PackageName":"com.google.android.apps.photos",
    "MainActivity":"com.google.android.apps.photos.home.HomeActivity",
    "SDKPath":"/Users/tianxiaogu/Library/Android/sdk/",
    "Epsilon":0.2,
    "Alpha":0.6,
    "Gamma":0.5,
    "MaxSeqLen":100,
    "MinSeqLen":20,
    "Time":3600
}

Here is the explanation of each option.

1. PackageName: the app name of the app under test.
2. MainActivity: the entry activity of the app.
3. SDKPath: the path to the Android SDK
   • We need to run the command adb to communicate with the phone.
4. Epsilon, Alpha, Gamma: the parameters for the reinforcement learning module. See the paper for more details.
5. MaxSeqLen, MinSeqLen: the length of actions in a single activity. See the paper for more details.
6. Time: the total testing time in seconds.

Step 5: Run

You need to build your own binary of the AimDroid controller. Please refer to the github project of AimDroid-controller.

Simply invoke monidroid from your command line.

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./monidroid