Flutter version switcher
A tool that enables you to manage Flutter versions. Works on Mac in the terminal and VSCode.
Getting started
Do the following things before using this tool:
1. Download most recent stable Flutter
First download the most recent stable Flutter distribution and unzip it into ~/flutter-versions/flutter-stable
. This directory should look like:
~/flutter-versions/flutter-stable
~/flutter-versions/flutter-stable/bin
~/flutter-versions/flutter-stable/bin/flutter
- etc.
2. Create a symlink to the Flutter installation
Create a symlink ~/flutter
that is pointing to ~/flutter-versions/flutter-stable
:
ln -s ~/flutter-versions/flutter-stable ~/flutter
3. Add the Flutter bin to your PATH
Add ~/flutter/bin
to your PATH
in your .zprofile
.
How it works
After completing the Getting started
section, adding a new Flutter version means just repeating the first 2 steps of this section: downloading the Flutter version and unzipping into ~/flutter-versions
and then making the symlink ~/flutter
to point to this new version. This is exactly what this script does.
Installation
npm i -g flutter-version
VSCode
Disable Dart: Add SDK to terminal path (sets dart.addSdkToTerminalPath
to false
), because otherwise your last Flutter path will be added to the $PATH. If you forgot to do this and you see an old Flutter path when you do: echo $PATH
, make sure to do an exit
from the Terminal, then close VScode and start it again. Then double check echo $PATH
and verify if your old Flutter path has been removed.
Don't specify entries for dart.flutterSdkPaths
in your VSCOde settings file. This setting enables switching versions from within VSCode, but it writes down the used version in the settings.json
file, which is not what we want.
Add your flutter symlink path to the dart.flutterSdkPath
setting:
{
"dart.flutterSdkPath": "~/flutter"
}
Commands
List installed Flutter versions
Lists all Flutter versions.
flutter-version list
The output will be something like:
┌─────────┬──────────────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬────────┬─────────┬───────────┐
│ (index) │ directory │ tag │ version │ channel │ active │ project │ mismatch │
├─────────┼──────────────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┼────────┼─────────┼───────────┤
│ 0 │ 'flutter-3.13.9' │ '3.13.9' │ '3.13.9' │ 'stable' │ false │ false │ undefined │
│ 1 │ 'flutter-stable' │ 'stable' │ '3.16.4' │ 'stable' │ true │ false │ undefined │
└─────────┴──────────────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴────────┴─────────┴───────────┘
-
directory
- the directory name inside the~/flutter-versions
directory -
tag
- can be a version (3.13.9) or a named tag (stable, beta, master) -
version
- the version of this Flutter directory -
channel
- the channel of this Flutter directory -
active
- whether this is currently the active version on your system -
project
- whether this is the Flutter version in your Flutter project - only displays somethings if you are inside a Flutter project -
mismatch
- displays a warning if you have a versioned Flutter directory, likeflutter-3.13.9
, but the flutter version from the binary is something else
Install a specific Flutter version
Downloads a specific Flutter version and place it inside the ~/flutter-versions
directory.
# Install specific stable version
flutter-version install 3.13.9
# Install specific beta version
flutter-version install 3.13.9.pre beta
Note that the argument beta
should be used if you want to install a beta version.
Uninstall specific Flutter version
flutter-version uninstall 3.13.9
Switch to a specific Flutter version
Switches the Flutter version on your system and, if you are in the root of a Flutter project, writes the version and channel into the .flutter-version.json
file.
Switches to the master channel (note that ~/flutter-versions/flutter-master
should exist):
flutter-version switch master
Switches to a specific version (note that ~/flutter-versions/flutter-3.16.2
should exist):
flutter-version switch 3.16.2
If you are in a Flutter project and you want to switch to whatever Flutter version if written into the .flutter-version.json
file, just do a switch without version or channel argument:
flutter-version switch
Gets the current active Flutter path
This prints the real path to the Flutter directory.
flutter-version path
Sees if we are on a versioned Flutter directory
flutter-version versioned
The output will be 1 if we are on versioned Flutter directory and 0 if we are not but on stable, beta or master.
flutter
command
Hijack the While not required, it's best to hijack the flutter
command, because it prevents you from doing:
- Running
flutter upgrade
while your active Flutter version points to a versioned directory, for example~/flutter-versions/flutter-13.6.2
, because then the directory version and the real version wouldn't match anymore. - Running
flutter channel CHANNEL
, because you should just download a channel, place it in the~/flutter-versions/flutter-CHANNEL
directory and runflutter upgrade
while this channel is the active Flutter version.
To make this work, place the ./flutter bash script somewhere (for example in your ~/bin
directory) and make it executable with chmod u+x
and add it to your PATH
before ~/flutter/bin
. This way this command will be executed instead of the "official" flutter command. On Mac OS, add this to the .zprofile
file and NOT the .zshrc
file, as this last one isn't read by VSCode. Now you will have something like:
export PATH="$HOME/bin/flutter:$HOME/flutter/bin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH"