Instruments UIAutomation REPL

Running REPL:

ruby repl.rb <path to your iOS.app> <device name>

The REPL will start, and you can enter the same commands that you would enter in an Instruments UI Automation script.

The easiest way I know of to find the full path to your iOS app (in simulator) is here: https://github.com/tue-savvy/SimulatorManager (doesn't quite find it, but gets you very close). You can find device names by typing instruments -s into your console.

What can I do with it

FIXME: actually give some examples here.

You can execute any Javascript statement that you can write in an instruments script, such as:

target.frontMostApp().mainWindow().tabBar()[0].tap()

to tap on the first element in the app's tab bar.

How does it work?

The REPL process:

1. Starts up a DRb server
2. Generates a Javascript file for Instruments that is described below
3. Pushes any commands into the DRb server's queue

The Instruments client is composed of two parts:

1. A simple script that will pop (it's not really LIFO) commands from the DRb server and print them out.

2. A (generated) Javascript file that loops the script and executes each command that is retrieved from the DRb server via eval