How does `appium driver` sub command works under the hood?

#1

I am recently looking into how appium works and wonder how the subcommand gets picked up by the source code.

For example these commands,

appium driver install flutter

appium driver install xcuitest

I trace it back to packages/appium/lib/main.js then I see main calls for init function and pas the args. Is the args contain all the sub command? I seem to lose track after that. Not really sure where init is using all the sub command and how init works.

I would appreciate it if you share more about how main and init work.

Cheers!

#2

You are right. The argument parsing logic lies in the init function.
This function:

  • resolves Appium home folder to load extensions and drivers from
  • sets up modules load path for extensions and drivers being loaded
  • parses command line arguments (either from CLI or a config file)
  • creates server instance and prepares parsed config arguments if given arguments are related to the server
  • passes arguments to the appropriate driver if needed

Consider checking the ArgParser class to get more info about how command line arguments are being parsed

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#3

Also check runExtensionCommand method implemntation to know more about driver or plugin subcommands processing

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