Android tests are generally run either on:
1) physical devices
2) emulators

Both options have nuances:
 * Devices you need to actually have, and in the desired configuration
 * Emulators need to be configured, often don't have play services set up appropraitely, and you need to build for target_cpu="x86" (non-default)

Our trybots use swarming to runs tests, and although it's not that hard to make use of swarming locally. I don't know of any devs that bother to use it. Instructions for doing so are here:
https://www.chromium.org/developers/testing/isolated-testing/for-swes

The idea here is to hide these steps behind a more friendly UX via the generated wrapper scripts. E.g.:

out/Debug/bin/chrome_public_test_apk run-isolated ...other flags...

It might also be useful to test that the swarming mechanism works properly by running via swarming and a local device:

out/Debug/bin/chrome_public_test_apk run-isolated --device=local ...other flags...


 

Android tests are generally run either on:
1) physical devices
2) emulators

Both options have nuances:
 * Devices you need to actually have, and in the desired configuration
 * Emulators need to be configured, often don't have play services set up appropraitely, and you need to build for target_cpu="x86" (non-default)

Our trybots use swarming to runs tests, and although it's not that hard to make use of swarming locally. I don't know of any devs that bother to use it. Instructions for doing so are here:
https://www.chromium.org/developers/testing/isolated-testing/for-swes

The idea here is to hide these steps behind a more friendly UX via the generated wrapper scripts. E.g.:

out/Debug/bin/chrome_public_test_apk run-isolated ...other flags...

It might also be useful to test that the swarming mechanism works properly by running via swarming and a local device:

out/Debug/bin/chrome_public_test_apk run-isolated --local ...other flags...