# Flutter Tools This section of the Flutter repository contains the command line developer tools for building Flutter applications. ## Working on Flutter Tools Be sure to follow the instructions on [CONTRIBUTING.md](../../CONTRIBUTING.md) to set up your development environment. Further, familiarize yourself with the [style guide](https://github.com/flutter/flutter/wiki/Style-guide-for-Flutter-repo), which we follow. ### Setting up First, ensure that the Dart SDK and other necessary artifacts are available by invoking the Flutter Tools wrapper script. In this directory run: ```shell $ flutter --version ``` ### Running the Tool To run Flutter Tools from source, in this directory run: ```shell $ dart bin/flutter_tools.dart ``` followed by command-line arguments, as usual. ### Running the analyzer To run the analyzer on Flutter Tools, in this directory run: ```shell $ flutter analyze ``` ### Writing tests As with other parts of the Flutter repository, all changes in behavior [must be tested](https://github.com/flutter/flutter/wiki/Style-guide-for-Flutter-repo#write-test-find-bug). Tests live under the `test/` subdirectory. - Hermetic unit tests of tool internals go under `test/general.shard`. - Tests of tool commands go under `test/commands.shard`. Hermetic tests go under its `hermetic/` subdirectory. Non-hermetic tests go under its `permeable` sub-directory. Avoid adding tests here and prefer writing either a unit test or a full integration test. - Integration tests (e.g. tests that run the tool in a subprocess) go under `test/integration.shard`. In general, the tests for the code in a file called `file.dart` should go in a file called `file_test.dart` in the subdirectory that matches the behavior of the test. #### Using local engine builds in integration tests The integration tests can be configured to use a specific local engine variant by setting the `FLUTTER_LOCAL_ENGINE` environment variable to the name of the local engine (e.g. "android_debug_unopt"). If the local engine build requires a source path, this can be provided by setting the `FLUTTER_LOCAL_ENGINE_SRC_PATH` environment variable. This second variable is not necessary if the `flutter` and `engine` checkouts are in adjacent directories. ```shell export FLUTTER_LOCAL_ENGINE=android_debug_unopt flutter test test/integration.shard/some_test_case ``` ### Running the tests To run all of the unit tests: ```shell $ flutter test test/general.shard ``` The tests in `test/integration.shard` are slower to run than the tests in `test/general.shard`. Depending on your development computer, you might want to increase timeouts and limit concurrency. Generally it is easier to run these on CI, or to manually verify the behavior you are changing instead of running the test. The integration tests also require the `FLUTTER_ROOT` environment variable to be set. The full invocation to run everything might therefore look something like: ```shell $ FLUTTER_ROOT=~/path/to/flutter-sdk $ flutter test --timeout 2x --concurrency 1 ``` This will take about an hour to complete. To run only the tests in `test/general.shard` (which takes about a minute), in this directory run: ```shell $ flutter test test/general.shard ``` To run the tests in a specific file, run: ```shell $ flutter test test/general.shard/utils_test.dart ``` ### Forcing snapshot regeneration To force the Flutter Tools snapshot to be regenerated, delete the following files: ```shell $ rm ../../bin/cache/flutter_tools.stamp ../../bin/cache/flutter_tools.snapshot ```