'pub run' with flutter tool requires redundant 'pub' on the command line

[sethladd]

@franzsilva wrote a cool tool for managing launcher icons, and packaged it as a pub package. Apparently, using the flutter tool, a user can't run the script without typing "pub" twice.

For example: flutter pub pub run flutter_launcher_icons:main

We're wondering if the following could work instead: flutter pub run flutter_launcher_icons:main

Comment: fluttercommunity/flutter_launcher_icons#4 (comment)

[sethladd]

cc @mit-mit @devoncarew

[Hixie]

It's actually flutter packages pub run flutter_launcher_icons:main.

What's going on is that flutter packages sets the environment for pub, then there's a bunch of commands that flutter packages supports (see flutter packages --help). One of those is pub; what that does is call through to pub and hand it the rest of the command line. The other commands are shortcuts to common things you do with pub, though they don't support all the features of pub. Namely, get and upgrade run pub get and pub upgrade, and test runs pub run test.

[mit-mit]

We are starting to see a few of these. I think we should reconsider this more globally as originally suggested in #9799

[sethladd]

We want to give our developers a way to extend their workflow with scripts distributed as pub packages. Then, we want to give them a clear way to run those scripts. So, +1 to making it a bit more discoverable and terse to run a workflow script :)

Thanks!

[MarkOSullivan94]

@sethladd any update on this?

[mit-mit]

No updates, sorry. For now, please use flutter packages pub run <dart file>

[matanlurey]

On the mailing list I suggested flutter script as a shorthand:

flutter script <pub package or command-line file.dart>

$ flutter script some_package
$ flutter script some_package:some_executable
$ flutter script tool/some_dart_file.dart

We could combine this with build_runner's support for code generation quite easily:

dart-lang/build#733

[mit-mit]

@matanlurey how would we determine if we should run the argument with the dart vm or through pub run? If there is a pubspec.yaml in the same dir or in the parent dir, then use pub run otherwise use the vm?