Gradle task for launching Android simulator

Android build toolchain, albeit being powerful, sometimes lacks some essential functionality required for the modern software development. In particular, running instrumented unit-tests in the CI environment: those tests require a device or a simulator running, however developers need some scripting to make it work.

To simplify the task, I've created a Gradle task that verifies if any Android device or simulator is connected. If not, the task launches a simulator with the first AVD in the list (or fails if no AVDs are found). It's up to you to make the dependencies for the connectedCheck task. The sample output:

> ./gradlew connect --info

...

:AndroidSampleApp:connect (Thread[main,5,main]) started.
:AndroidSampleApp:connect
Executing task ':AndroidSampleApp:connect' (up-to-date check took 0.001 secs) due to:
  Task has not declared any outputs.
Detecting devices...
Launching emulator for Nexus_5_API_25 ...
:AndroidSampleApp:connect (Thread[main,5,main]) completed. Took 14.186 secs.

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

The code (just add it into the build.gradle of the module):




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