What is Flutter?

• Flutter is a cross-platform UI framework developed by Google used to build applications for Android, iOS, Web, Windows, macOS, and Linux.

0. (macOS only) You can install using homebrew. If you don’t have it yet, install homebrew with the following command:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Then use homebrew to install fvm

brew tap leoafarias/fvm
brew install fvm

You can also install fvm on other platforms If you’re interested, check the documentation directly

1. Download Flutter SDK from the official site or install using fvm introduced in the previous step

a. (mac/windows) Download the officially provided version from the link above

b. Or download using fvm

fvm install stable  # Install the latest stable version

Then set the default Flutter version globally

fvm global stable

2. Set up Flutter in your environment variables

(windows) Set the following path in environment variables (if manually downloaded, replace with the corresponding bin path)

$HOME/fvm/default/bin

(macos) Set in terminal configuration, for example in the common .zshrc:

open ~/.zshrc

Then add the following to .zshrc

export PATH=$PATH:"$HOME/fvm/default/bin"

3. Use flutter doctor to check what’s missing in your current environment and install what’s needed

• If you’re building for android, macos, ios, you’ll need to download Android Studio and Xcode

• Even with everything installed, you might encounter errors due to incomplete installation of Android Tools or iOS CocoapPods
  
  

• In my case, I encountered three issues
  • cmdline-tools not found
    
    
    • Use sdkManager in Android tool to install. If you know the path to sdkManager or have it set in environment variables, install cmdline-tools directly with the command

       $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/tools/bin/sdkmanager --install "cmdline-tools;latest"
      

    • You might encounter Java version compatibility issues. If so, switch your local Java version. In my case, reverting to Java 8 fixed it
      
      

  • CocoaPods compatibility issue:
    
    

    • You can install the latest version using the sudo gem install cocoapods command
  • Haven’t agreed to Android licenses:
    
    You can agree with the following command

       flutter doctor --android-licenses
    

• Run flutter doctor again to see if you were successful. If successful, you’ll be able to develop or compile Flutter
  
  

Running Directly on Target Device

• Navigate to the root directory of your Flutter project
  
  
• When you run directly, any missing resources or tools will be downloaded, then you’ll be asked to select a target platform to run on

    flutter run
  

  
  
  

Building a dmg file for macOS

• Navigate to the root directory of your Flutter project
  
  

• Make sure compilation for macOS is enabled

    flutter config --enable-macos-desktop
  

• Build for a specific platform. The following example is for macOS

    flutter build macos
  

  • After the build is complete, an xxx.app is generated
    
    

• The xxx.app generated above is still just an application. If you need a .dmg, you need to package it further

  • You’ll need to use the create-dmg plugin, so install it with npm

    npm install -g create-dmg
    

  • Package the xxx.app you just built:
    • --dmg-title: You can set the name of the installation package on disk
      
      

      create-dmg build/macos/Build/Products/Release/xxx.app --dmg-title="Application Name" --overwrite
      

• I’ve written about this in another article, please refer to it