NativeScript iOS test suite powered by FlyCI's macOS runners

NativeScript^↗ is an open-source framework for building truly native mobile applications using JavaScript, TypeScript, or Angular. It enables developers to use web technologies they are already familiar with, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, to build mobile apps that perform and look like they were developed using native SDKs for iOS and Android platforms. It is kindly supported by OpenJS Foundation^↗ Read more about NativeScript^↗.

NativeScript code^↗ is located in a public GitHub repository having: StarFork

Testimonial

NNathanWalker

Wow, it's night/day faster and more efficient. In the past, running iOS and Android test suites could take up to 30 mins and beyond sometimes. In addition they would very often flake out through timeouts and not start at all (most often with Android emulator based tests), requiring a manual restart.

They now take collectively less than 10 minutes on average!

Read more on GitHub^↗

How NativeScript Utilizes FlyCI's Customer Support

A few months back, we caught up with Nathan Walker, a key developer behind NativeScript, to talk about how they've been using GitHub Actions in their development process. Nathan mentioned that the team ran into some snags with running NativeScript's test suites for iOS and Android on GitHub's runners. That's when our Customer Support team stepped in and swiftly resolved the issue within hours^↗.

How NativeScript Utilizes FlyCI's macOS runners

NativeScript core consists of iOS runtime and Android runtime. The runtimes are the proxy mechanism that "translates" the JavaScript code to the corresponding native APIs. The iOS test suite is where our macOS runners come in action:

jobs:
  test-ios:
    runs-on: flyci-macos-14-m2
....
    - name: Run tests on iOS Simulator
      run: node tools/scripts/run-automated.js ios

Experience with FlyCI macOS Runners

We asked Nathan Walker^↗ to share team's motivation for using FlyCI, the experience so far, and the improvements they saw. Here is the feedback^↗ we got.

• Motivation: "We need to be able to start iOS simulators so macOS runners are a must."

• Experience: "We have encountered no issues yet but will keep you all posted but it's been great so far!"

• Improvements: "Perhaps some tutorials on setup for open source project use"

NNathanWalker

Give FlyCI a try, it's fast!

Check out FlyCI Getting Started guide for a quick start with fast and cheap FlyCI macOS runners!