How do I build different versions of my Flutter app for qa/dev/prod?
Building on Seth's idea, here's an example that sets up a global representing the BuildEnvironment
named env
.
env.dart
import 'package:meta/meta.dart';
enum BuildFlavor { production, development, staging }
BuildEnvironment get env => _env;
BuildEnvironment _env;
class BuildEnvironment {
/// The backend server.
final String baseUrl;
final BuildFlavor flavor;
BuildEnvironment._init({this.flavor, this.baseUrl});
/// Sets up the top-level [env] getter on the first call only.
static void init({@required flavor, @required baseUrl}) =>
_env ??= BuildEnvironment._init(flavor: flavor, baseUrl: baseUrl);
}
main_dev.dart
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'env.dart';
import 'app.dart';
void main() {
BuildEnvironment.init(
flavor: BuildFlavor.development, baseUrl: 'http://dev.example.com');
assert(env != null);
runApp(App());
}
main_prod.dart
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'env.dart';
import 'app.dart';
void main() {
BuildEnvironment.init(
flavor: BuildFlavor.production, baseUrl: 'http://example.com');
assert(env != null);
runApp(App());
}
- import
env.dart
to expose theenv
variable. -
run and build the app using the
target
option.flutter run -t lib/main_dev.dart flutter build -t lib/main_dev.dart
To integrate with VS Code, define launch configurations:
.vscode/launch.json
{
"version": "0.2.0",
"configurations": [
{
"name": "development",
"program": "lib/main_dev.dart",
"request": "launch",
"type": "dart"
},
{
"name": "production",
"program": "lib/main_prod.dart",
"request": "launch",
"type": "dart"
}
]
}
I had originally set out to use command line arguments passed to Dart's main
function, but I don't think args can currently be passed on the command line with flutter run
or flutter build
, although VS Code and Android Studio both support passing args to main
. It also seems build flavor as a command line arg to main
is not appropriate since args can be passed after the build process.
Release and debug mode can now be acquired using
const bool isProduction = bool.fromEnvironment('dart.vm.product');
Because this is a constant it works with tree-shaking.
So code like
if(isProduction) {
// branch 1
} else {
// branch 2
}
would only include one of these two branches into production code depending on isProduction