A memorial tribute for Jonathan Gerrish

In late August, 2021, we were incredibly saddened to learn of the tragic passing of Jonathan Gerrish and his family while they were hiking near Mariposa, CA. Jonathan was a long-time Robolectric maintainer and active contributor since 2014. He saw incredible potential in Robolectric and championed it within Google, elevating it to an officially supported testing tool that grew to be used by tens of thousands of Android developers.

The breadth of the contributions that Jonathan made to the project are too wide to list in this post. He was involved in many high-profile projects such as revamping PackageManager support and binary resources. He also worked extensively to get first-class support for Robolectric in Gradle and Bazel. Jonathan was passionate about continually improving the fidelity of Robolectric to the point where write-once, run-everywhere was possible. This allowed the same test to either be run in Robolectric or any physical or virtual Android device.

More importantly, Jonathan had a great spirit and was beloved by friends and family. He was friendly, easy-going, and respectful. He settled near Mariposa, CA to be closer to nature and to enjoy the open space and fresh air.

We miss you dearly, Jon. You will always be remembered by the Robolectric community.