Jenkins-ios: how to launch the iphone simulator from Jenkins

Question

I'm using the Jenkins CI as build management tool on the build server and I am running my unit test cases using the below command through Jenkins.

export DEVELOPER_DIR=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/
xcodebuild -sdk iphonesimulator -project MyStore2.xcodeproj -scheme MyStore2 -configuration Debug RUN_APPLICATION_TESTS_WITH_IOS_SIM=YES ONLY_ACTIVE_ARCH=NO clean test 2>&1 | /usr/local/bin/ocunit2junit 

The iPhone simulator is not launched from the Jenkins UI, whereas if I use the same command in command prompt, it is working fine.

The build console output is as below:

/Users/Shared/Jenkins/Home/workspace/iOSUnitTestCaseSample/MyStore2/Images.xcassets
2014-08-12 03:11:38.979 IBCocoaTouchImageCatalogTool[92947:303] CFPreferences: user home directory at file:///Users/Shared/Jenkins/Library/Application%20Support/iPhone%20Simulator/User/ is unavailable. User domains will be volatile.
/* com.apple.actool.compilation-results */
/Users/Shared/Jenkins/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/MyStore2-cfjvjlzuxlhdpddpszyhlozlqjdw/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/MyStore2.app/LaunchImage-700-568h@2x.png
/Users/Shared/Jenkins/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/MyStore2-cfjvjlzuxlhdpddpszyhlozlqjdw/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/MyStore2.app/Assets.car
/Users/Shared/Jenkins/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/MyStore2-cfjvjlzuxlhdpddpszyhlozlqjdw/Build/Intermediates/MyStore2.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/MyStore2.build/assetcatalog_generated_info.plist

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/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/dsymutil /Users/Shared/Jenkins/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/MyStore2-cfjvjlzuxlhdpddpszyhlozlqjdw/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/MyStore2Tests.xctest/MyStore2Tests -o /Users/Shared/Jenkins/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/MyStore2-cfjvjlzuxlhdpddpszyhlozlqjdw/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/MyStore2Tests.xctest.dSYM

Please guide me on how to resolve this issue. Help Appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I've solved this in the past by using the JNLP client on the Jenkins slave and having a user logged in. My theory is that if you launch the slave agent via SSH, there is no windowing environment for the simulator to run in.

Another solution is to use ios-sim.