Is it possible to find out if an Android application runs as part of an instrumentation test

Question

Is there a runtime check for an application to find out if it runs as part of an instrumentation test?

Background: Our application performs a database sync when starting. But that should happen only when started regularly. It especially interferes with the instrumentation tests testing the db sync. Not surprisingly.

And with all the other tests it's just a waste of CPU cycles.

Answer 1

If you're using ActivityUnitTestCase, you could set a custom Application object with setApplication, and have a flag in there to switch database sync on or off? There's an example of using a custom Application object on my blog:

http://www.paulbutcher.com/2011/03/mock-objects-on-android-with-borachio-part-3/