+cc rnephew@ who wrote https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/third_party/catapult/devil/devil/android/device_utils.py?q=GrantPermissions&l=739 which I think is the code involved in setting the permissions.  Maybe it's a race condition between setting the permission and starting the test activity?

Note yabinh@ has a patch to more clearly report the error at https://codereview.chromium.org/2380593002/ (though not a fix for underlying problem yet).

rnephew@, can you take a look at this bug?

Output would be nice. Logcat from the fail would be even better. I'm remote this week so wont be able to run it locally easily until next week. 

How are you installing the apk? How are you running the test (test runner or the wrapper scripts)?

When the test runner installs the apk it sets all permissions that are set in the manifest. Usually when there are problems with permissions it means somewhere the app data is getting cleared and the permissions are not being regranted. 

The script I used to build and run the test is:

. build/android/envsetup.sh &&
gn gen out_android_gn/Debug --args='target_os="android" is_component_build=true symbol_level=1 use_goma=true enable_incremental_javac=true google_play_services_type="public"  is_debug=true disable_incremental_isolated_processes=true ' && ninja -C out_android_gn/Debug -j1000 -l20 content_shell_apk_incremental content_shell_test_apk_incremental && out_android_gn/Debug/bin/install_content_shell_apk_incremental && out_android_gn/Debug/bin/run_content_shell_test_apk_incremental  --num_retries=0 --test-filter ImeTest.testImeCopy