Xamarin.UITest test-cloud.exe Upload Errors
Important
Visual Studio App Center is scheduled for retirement on March 31, 2025. While you can continue to use Visual Studio App Center until it is fully retired, there are several recommended alternatives that you may consider migrating to.
When you submit a Xamarin.UITest test run to App Center Test, the appcenter command uses test-cloud.exe from the Xamarin.UITest NuGet package. If the appcenter command is unable to find that executable, or it finds one that's a different version than the one used to build the tests, it won't upload the test run and you'll get an error.
The command uses a heuristic to locate test-cloud.exe. Some project or NuGet settings can result in appcenter not finding it and reporting the Cannot find test-cloud.exe error, or locating the wrong one and advising UITest.dll and the tools are incompatible.
Solutions
Rebuild
Rebuilding is always a good start for troubleshooting.
If you haven't rebuilt the UITest project after changing the Xamarin.UITest package version, then clean, rebuild, and try the appcenter test run uitest ... command again.
Manually specify the UITest tools directory
Note
The Xamarin.UITest version used for your upload must be an exact match with the version used to build your tests.
If that doesn't solve the problem, the solution is to add the --uitest-tools-dir option to your command, pointing to the tools directory that has the right test-cloud.exe.
But where's test-cloud.exe?
test-cloud.exe is inside your Xamarin.UITest package. To find that package, check the properties > path setting for Xamarin.UITest in the Visual Studio Project Explorer.
Visual Studio for Mac
References > From Packages > Xamarin.UITest (ctrl+click or right-click) > properties > path
Visual Studio
Solution Explorer > References > Xamarin.UITest (right-click) > properties > path
This path will point to the Xamarin.UITest.dll and look something like (on Mac):
/Users/user/.../PROJECT/packages/Xamarin.UITest.3.0.7/lib/net45/Xamarin.UITest.dll
The corresponding tools folder for --uitest-tools-dir would be:
/Users/user/.../PROJECT/packages/Xamarin.UITest.3.0.7/tools/
Make sure this folder exists and has test-cloud.exe.
Add this to your test run command (no line break)
--uitest-tools-dir "/Users/user/.../PROJECT/packages/Xamarin.UITest.3.0.7/tools/"
You could instead use a relative path based on where you're running the appcenter command.
Remote build service
If the packages are installed on the build machine but you don't know where and can't use Visual Studio to check the location, you can use a brute force method to find the test-cloud.exe files on your machine (you may need to vary the starting folders or drives to search):
dir d:\test-cloud.exe/s (Windows) find / -name test-cloud.exe (Mac)
If the NuGet packages aren't installed until the project builds, you could execute one the brute force method during the build to locate Xamarin.UITest package.
If all else fails, you can manually download the Xamarin.UITest package from NuGet, unzip it and add test-cloud.exe to your project at a known location.