flutter doctor output is confusing for missing Android SDK packages

[DanTup]

I've been setting up flutter on my MacBook and had a similar issue to when setting up on Windows... I run flutter doctor and get output like this:

[-] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices
    • Android SDK at /Users/danny/Dev/android
    • ANDROID_HOME = /Users/danny/Dev/android
    ✗ Android SDK is missing command line tools; download from https://goo.gl/XxQghQ
    • Try re-installing or updating your Android SDK,
      visit https://flutter.io/setup/#android-setup for detailed instructions.

I'd downloaded the SDK and used sdkmanager to install the things I thought I needed (platform-tools, build-tools, etc.). The message above just says I need "command line tools" and links to the Android Studio install page.

What was actually missing is the platform package, which I installed using sdkmanager "platforms;android-26".

I remember having similar confusion on Windows; it wasn't obvious what I still needed to install. It would be great if "command line tools" in the message could be extended to be more specific about what's missing. Since Android Studio isn't the only flutter IDE it should be easy for someone that doesn't want to install it to get set up.

[ice1000]

Same. On Ubuntu 16.04, and my SDK is installed via Android Studio.

[samayo]

Same problem. God, can't anything work out of the box anymore

[samayo]

@DanTup How did you end up installing the missing library? I mean, I have downloaded the https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools.html src and tried to run every executable file afterwards but with no effect

[DanTup]

@samayo It's been a while now, but in the OP I wrote:

What was actually missing is the platform package, which I installed using sdkmanager "platforms;android-26".

I believe that last part was the exact command; though it's possible I'd already installed some of the other packages too. If you run sdkmanager --list it'll show you all the packages both installed and available. Here's my installed section (note: the Path column gets truncated and apparently there's no way to fix that!)

Dannys-MacBook:~ danny$ sdkmanager --list
Installed packages:
  Path                              | Version | Description                       | Location                         
  -------                           | ------- | -------                           | -------                          
  build-tools;25.0.3                | 25.0.3  | Android SDK Build-Tools 25.0.3    | build-tools/25.0.3/              
  build-tools;26.0.0                | 26.0.0  | Android SDK Build-Tools 26        | build-tools/26.0.0/              
  emulator                          | 26.1.3  | Android Emulator                  | emulator/                        
  patcher;v4                        | 1       | SDK Patch Applier v4              | patcher/v4/                      
  platform-tools                    | 26.0.0  | Android SDK Platform-Tools        | platform-tools/                  
  platforms;android-25              | 3       | Android SDK Platform 25           | platforms/android-25/            
  platforms;android-26              | 2       | Android SDK Platform 26           | platforms/android-26/            
  system-images;a...google_apis;x86 | 5       | Google APIs Intel x86 Atom Sys... | system-images/a...oogle_apis/x86/
  tools                             | 26.0.2  | Android SDK Tools                 | tools/              

HTH!

[imtusharrai]

AndroidStudio-Windows : flutter run
√] Flutter (on Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.16299.248], locale en-IN, channel dev)
Android toolchain - develop for Android devices $ANDROID_HOME to that location.?[0m0)

[√] Flutter (on Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.16299.248], locale en-IN, channel dev)

[samayo]

Can't believe anyone bothers to use this library. I tried to make it work for three weeks and finally decided to let it go. Installing this library and writting basic hello world almost gave me a stroke.

[mikolajpp]

This issue can be resolved by installing standard android SDK via android-studio on linux.

Linux distributions of android-sdk are missing many required files, such as build.prop and others.

EDIT: Also minimal required version of android-sdk is 25. appropiate platform directory must exist inside sdk dir.

This is what I get from digging into the source of flutter tool.

[mikolajpp]

Using the newest android-sdk available on Archlinux you can easily setup the environment:

venus% ANDROID_HOME=~/Android/ bin/flutter doctor                   
Doctor summary (to see all details, run flutter doctor -v):
[✓] Flutter (Channel master, v0.1.8-pre.24, on Linux, locale en_US.UTF-8)
[✓] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices (Android SDK 27.0.3)
[✓] Android Studio (version 3.0)
[✓] IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition (version 2017.3)

[mholtman]

It's unfortunate that the standard answer seems to be "Install Android Studio". This is a less than optimal solution when trying to build Flutter in a CI environment via Docker.

[mikolajpp]

That's true, but it is some solution for now :-)
There is another thread about improving error messages, which could lead to some improvements in this area, see #15017

[zoechi]

@mholtman the flutter travis scripts installs it using sdkmanager, you can look it up there (if I correctly understand your question)

[DanTup]

the flutter travis scripts installs it using sdkmanager, you can look it up there (if I correctly understand your question)

Oh wow, why didn't I think of this? I spent ages trying to figure out which packages to install to get things working, but they're all listed in the CI scripts!

https://github.com/flutter/flutter/blob/master/dev/bots/travis_setup.sh

Thanks! :D

(not sure if there's a Windows equiv of that script though, appveyor config seems light.. but at least it has the right commands/packages you can copy).

[mholtman]

@zoechi That was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you very much!

[solarkraft]

Linux: Downloaded Android Studio, ran it once, Flutter doctor complains about licenses and forwards me right to accepting them. That's convenient.
Finding out what I had to do wasn't.