I've been using Appium for automation in Android, I always was surprised for the resigning of the apk.
This signing only has caused problems to me, and I cannot see any advantage of this 'feature'.
When there were problems, I simply add the nosign configuration, and all worked correctly, and never see any side effect doing it.
So, is there any benefit of this?
As per my research and knowledge:
Appium relies on instrumentation for certain features (requires signing) so you'll want to sign using your known key to avoid the tamper detection problems.
It should be possible to support not signing when using only uiautomator.
You can automate Android apk files using appium, as long as you have the apk binary.
iOS requires a signed developer build.
Point in the introduction page states that "You shouldn't have to recompile your app or modify it in any way in order to automate it." So that means we do not need to re-sign the apk to automate with appium.
