virtualbox.org

I tried to use the autostart plist script to fire up a VM, it works fine. Problem is I need the GUI to actually show on the desktop screen, we are using Jenkins to build our Android code and deploy it to the VM then run UI tests using Robotium. Problem is the VM started via the plist script doesn't have a UI that is visible to Jenkins. Please don't say use VBoxSDL its not actually installed on the Mac and its not for production environments since its only for devs of VB to use.

If you are refering to the autostart provided within Virtualbox, it starts the VM using the vboxheadless front-end, which does not have a GUI by design. If you still wish to interact with the desktop of the VM, you can always use the VRDE server.
Else, it is simply not possible to switch between front-ends without restarting the VM.

I know that I can run it headless but the purpose of my post was to find out how to run a GUI particularly and Android VM so that I can run GUI testing with Robotium. So please can you address this issue with specifics instead of vague references to VRDE.

Starting VBox local (not headless) guests at host boot is a process of the host. Create a startup script and place it on the host where it will run at boot/login.

Example:
VBoxManage startvm <uuid|name>