Mitigate animation sync debugging devex by introducing a better tool

[d4vidi]

This is currently an abstract requirement in the form of an issue, which would hopefully materialize in the future onto actual specs.

Problem

Detox's super-sophisticated automated app-synchronization mechanism can be a double ended sword.

While it does unlock the ability to write tests without having to think of action completion times, sometimes it acts as a progress blocker. Specifically, whenever the associated app doesn't become idle following an action. These cases can be difficult to troubleshoot, especially when it comes to animations:

09:04:20.170 detox[90417] i The app is busy with the following tasks:
• UI elements are busy:
  - View animations pending: 2.
  - Layers pending animations: 7.
  - Layers needs layout: 147.
  - View needs layout: 98.
  - View needs display: 67.
  - Layers needs display: 82.

An animation can be endless for numerous reasons; What's even worse is that it can be running off-screen and therefore hidden 🤦🏻 This makes endless animations difficult to troubleshoot, overall.

We need a tool / debug-synch enhancement that would be able to either explicitly point out the associated element (even if it's off-screen), or at least hint at where and what it is.

Solution

TBD