Appium 2.0 Releases and update - Part 2

With Appium 2.0 installs such dependencies in APPIUM_HOME environment variable. 

The default path is ~/.appium. So, the path to appium-webdriveragent could be $APPIUM_HOME/node_modules/appium-xcuitest-driver/node_modules/appium-webdriveragent after installing the XCUITest driver package.

Driver updates

In the past, to get updates to your iOS or Android drivers, you'd simply wait for those updates to be rolled into a new release of Appium, and then update your Appium version. With Appium 2.x, the Appium server and the Appium drivers are versioned and released separately.

To check for driver updates : 

- appium driver list --updates

To install the update for any driver

- appium driver update xcuitest

To update the Appium server itself, you do the same thing as in the past: 

  - npm install -g appium

If you would like to update to a specific version, not the latest, please uninstall the driver and install the desired version using the install subcommand instead of update.

- appium driver uninstall xcuitest

- appium driver install xcuitest@4.11.1

Protocol changes

Appium's API is based on the W3C WebDriver Protocol, and it has supported this protocol for years.

Up until Appium 2.0, Appium supported both protocols, so that older Selenium/Appium clients could still communicate with newer Appium servers. Moving forward, support for older protocols will be removed. Yet to wait for the update

Capabilities

Previously called "desired capabilities", and now called simply "capabilities"

For example:

• appium:app
• appium:noReset
• appium:deviceName

Also introduced the option of wrapping up all Appium-related capabilities into one object capability, appium:options. 

{

  "platformName": "iOS",

  "browserName": "Safari",

  "appium:options": {

    "platformVersion": "14.4",

    "deviceName": "iPhone 11",

    "automationName": "XCUITest"

  }

}

Image analysis features moved to plugin

Appium Java Client	Selenium client
8.5.0, 8.5.1	4.9.1, 4.10.0
8.4.0	4.8.2, 4.8.3, 4.9.0
8.3.0	4.7.0, 4.7.1, 4.7.2, 4.8.0, 4.8.1
8.2.1	4.5.0, 4.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.5.3, 4.6.0