Desktop Embedding for Flutter

This project was originally created to develop Windows, macOS, and Linux implementations of Flutter. That work has since become part of the Flutter engine repository, and this project is now just an example of, and test environment for, building applications using those libraries.

For information about the shells themselves, see the Flutter page about desktop support.

How to Use This Code

If you have an existing Flutter app and just want to get it running, see the quick start page before continuing.

Setting Up

Tools

You will need developer tools for your platform:

• Linux: A recent version of GCC
• macOS: The current version of Xcode
• Windows: Visual Studio 2017, including the "Desktop development with C++" workload. (See #342 for 2019.)

Source

If you are building anything other than example/, the tooling and build infrastructure for this project requires that you have a Flutter tree in the same parent directory as the clone of this project:

<parent dir>
  ├─ flutter (from https://github.com/flutter/flutter)
  └─ flutter-desktop-embedding (from https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop-embedding)

Alternately, you can place a .flutter_location_config file in the directory containing flutter-desktop-embedding, containing a path to the Flutter tree to use, if you prefer not to have the Flutter tree next to flutter-desktop-embedding.

Repository Structure

The example directory contains an example application built using the library for each platform. See its README to get started.

In addition, there is:

• plugins: Plugins which provide access to additional platform functionality. These follow a similar structure to Flutter plugins. See the README for details.
• third_party: Dependencies used by this repository, beyond Flutter itself.
• tools: Tools used in the development process.

Debugging

Debugging of the Flutter side of a desktop application is possible, but requires a modified workflow.

To debug the Flutter engine, you can use a local engine build.

Feedback and Discussion

For bug reports and specific feature requests, you can file GitHub issues. For general discussion and questions there's a project mailing list.

When submitting issues related to build errors or other bugs, please make sure to include the git hash of the Flutter checkout you are using. This will help speed up the debugging process.

For build errors, please also run:

tools/run_dart_tool doctor

before filing a bug or emailing the list, to ensure that you have all the basic dependencies set up correctly.

Caveats

• This is not an officially supported Google product.
• The code and examples here, and the desktop Flutter libraries they use, are in early stages, and not intended for production use.
• There is currently no versioning system for coordinating the version of this project with the required version of Flutter. For now the expectation is that anyone experimenting with this project will be tracking Flutter's master branch. If you encounter build issues, try using a newer version of Flutter. If your issues are specific to the latest Flutter master, please file a bug!