Flutter SDK for Workshop

A development environment for Flutter and Dart projects. It provides the Flutter framework, the Dart SDK, and system dependencies for Linux desktop development. The pub package cache is persisted on the host to speed up dependency resolution across workshop updates.

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Reference workshop

A minimal workshop:

# workshop.yaml
name: flutter-app
base: ubuntu@24.04
sdks:
  - name: flutter
    channel: latest/stable

actions:
  build: |
    cd my_app && flutter build linux
  run: |
    cd my_app && flutter run -d linux
  test: |
    cd my_app && flutter test

This demonstrates a basic Flutter workflow for Linux desktop apps with persistent package caching.

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Using the SDK

Prerequisites, project layout

1. No prerequisite SDKs are required.
2. Your Flutter project (with a pubspec.yaml file) should be in your project directory, or you can create one with flutter create.
3. On launch, the SDK configures PATH for both Flutter and Dart, installs Linux desktop build dependencies (clang, cmake, ninja, GTK), and runs flutter precache to download platform artifacts.

Create and build a project

Once the workshop is ready:

workshop shell
flutter create --platforms=linux my_app
cd my_app
flutter build linux

The release binary is at my_app/build/linux/x64/release/bundle/my_app.

Run the app

workshop shell
cd my_app
flutter run -d linux

This launches the app on the Linux desktop. A display server (X11 or Wayland) must be available—the SDK ships with the desktop plug for this purpose.

Run tests

From within the workshop shell:

workshop shell
cd my_app
flutter test

Verify from the command line

workshop shell
flutter --version
dart --version
flutter doctor -v

Pub cache

Downloaded packages are stored in ~/.pub-cache, which is mapped to the host via the pub-cache mount plug. Subsequent builds reuse cached packages.

To see where the pub cache is stored on the host:

workshop info

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Plugs (resources this SDK consumes)

pub-cache

• Interface: mount
• Workshop target: /home/workshop/.pub-cache
• Purpose: Persists Dart/Flutter package downloads between workshop updates.

Slots (resources this SDK provides)

This SDK doesn't define any slots.

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Documentation and guidance

• Flutter documentation
• Dart documentation
• Flutter Linux desktop
• Workshop documentation

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Community and support

• Flutter community: Flutter Community
• Workshop forum: Discourse
• Please review our Code of Conduct before participating.

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Contributions

All contributions, including code, documentation updates, and issue reports, are welcome!

• See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.
• Open issues or pull requests on the official repository.

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License and copyright

Copyright 2025 Canonical Ltd.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 (LGPLv2.1) as published by the Free Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.