[arquillian-issues] [JBoss JIRA] (ARQ-1534) There is no way how to set server port of Android Debug Bridge

Sat Oct 26 19:22:03 EDT 2013

    [ https://issues.jboss.org/browse/ARQ-1534?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12825201#comment-12825201 ] 

Stefan Miklosovic edited comment on ARQ-1534 at 10/26/13 7:21 PM:
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[~kpiwko]

In connection to this problem, it is good idea to clarify whole adb connections related process. From https://developer.android.com/tools/help/adb.html :

{quote}
Android Debug Bridge (adb) is a versatile command line tool that lets you communicate with an emulator instance or connected Android-powered device. It is a client-server program that includes three components:

*A client*, which runs on your development machine. You can invoke a client from a shell by issuing an adb command. Other Android tools such as the ADT plugin and DDMS also create adb clients.

*A server*, which runs as a background process on your development machine. *The server manages communication between the client and the adb daemon running on an emulator or device*.

*A daemon*, which runs as a background process on each emulator or device instance.

When you start an adb client, the client first checks whether there is an adb server process already running. If there isn't, it starts the server process. *When the server starts, it binds to local TCP port 5037* and listens for commands sent from adb clients—*all adb clients use port 5037 to communicate with the adb server*.

The server then sets up connections to all running emulator/device instances. *It locates emulator/device instances by scanning odd-numbered ports in the range 5555 to 5585, the range used by emulators/devices. When the server finds an adb daemon, it sets up a connection to that port.* Note that each emulator/device instance acquires a pair of sequential ports — an even-numbered port for console connections and an odd-numbered port for adb connections.
{quote}

In order to specify adb server port where Android debug bridge should be bound to, you have to set environment variable

{code}
ANDROID_ADB_SERVER_PORT
{code}

to whatever port you want. After it, when new instance of adb server is started, it is bound to that specified server port or to 5037 by default when not specified differently.

When you want to start adb server manually on the command line with non-default port, you have to do it like this

{code}
adb -P 10000 fork-server server
{code}

so by specifying different port every time, you have multiple instances of adb bridge which in turn means that when you are about to start an emulator, ddmlib tries to connect its client to ANDROID_ADB_SERVER_PORT or by default to 5037.

You can set adbPort configuration property right now in arquillian.xml but it serves as "odd-numbered" port mentioned above where emulator instance is bound so that started server daemon on arbitrary port (by env port set) connects afterwards.

It seems that when ANDROID_ADB_SERVER_PORT is set and tests are executed, emulator adb client starts to communicate with server instance bound to that port so it seems that it does not collide with Eclipse.

Moreover, I noticed that error messages are written out to Eclipse console output only when Android emulator is started and I kill the only running instance of Android debug bridge (so no adb server is running) so Eclipse's adb client listens to void which is the cause of that error output.

In addition, that environment property is read from System.getenv and if we wanted to be able to change that port from arquillian.xml, there would have to be kind of ugly hack to modify environment property map after JVM has read that since it can not be modified once created (by default, but it can be hacked afterwards and the result of this is rather questionable).

      was (Author: smikloso):
    [~kpiwko]