Setting up flutter environment in Linux

If you try to set up an Flutter environment, you must read in the official documentation suggest that get the best development experience it's recommended install Android Studio.

This is my approach to get a full Flutter environment only with CLI tools.

Get Flutter

Firs to all, we need to get Flutter and set-up environment variables.

I used ~/.bin/flutter folder as main flutter root.

bash

# pwd: ~/.bin/
git clone https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git -b stable

Now, set flutter/bin dir permanetly to shell PATH.

NOTE: In my scenario, I used Fish Shell. So, that's the way to set a new environment variable on it.

bash

set -U fish_user_paths ~/.bin/flutter/bin

After that, we need to get some platform tools.

bash

flutter precache

If you don't see any error at this point, flutter and dart have been installed correctly.

Now, run flutter doctor, and some errors occurs. That's ok!

bash

Doctor summary (to see all details, run flutter doctor -v):
[✓] Flutter (Channel stable, 2.10.3, on Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 4.19.0-19-amd64, locale en_US.UTF-8)
[✗] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices
    ✗ cmdline-tools component is missing
      Run `path/to/sdkmanager --install "cmdline-tools;latest"`
      See https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line for more details.
[✗] Chrome - develop for the web (Cannot find Chrome executable at google-chrome)
    ! Cannot find Chrome. Try setting CHROME_EXECUTABLE to a Chrome executable.
[!] Android Studio (not installed)
[✓] VS Code (version 1.65.2)
[!] Connected device
    ! No devices available
[✓] HTTP Host Availability

! Doctor found issues in 4 categories.

Android toolchain

NOTE: with flutter 2.10.* you need android-29 API version.

Flutter SDK needs Android 4.1 (API level 16) or higher to works correctly.

Create a root dir to Android environment setup.

bash

mkdir ~/.android && cd .android

Now get Android command line tools.

bash

# pwd: ~/.android/
curl https://dl.google.com/android/repository/commandlinetools-linux-8092744_latest.zip -o cmd_line.zip && unzip cmd_line.zip
rm -rf *.zip

Now, we need to move all files to new nested folder called latest.

NOTE: this step is required 'cause when sdkmanager command is running, by default works with a sub-folder inside of cmdline-tools/ folder. Some like this: cmdline-tools/{latest | version.N.N }/

bash

# pwd: ~/.android/
mkdir ./cmdline-tools/latest
rsync -arv --exclude=./cmdline-tools/latest ./cmdline-tools/* ./cmdline-tools/latest/
rm -rf (string match -rv '^./cmdline-tools/latest/*$' -- ./cmdline-tools/*)

Add cmdline-tools/latest/bin to shell path.

bash

set -U fish_user_paths ~/.android/cmdline-tools/latest/bin

Set Android SDK path on flutter global configuration.

bash

flutter config --android-sdk /home/{USER}/.android/

Get build and platform tools.

NOTE: latest stable version of build tools is 32.0.0.

bash

sdkmanager --install "build-tools;32.0.0"

Now, get the latest version of platform tools.

bash

sdkmanager --install "platform-tools"

At this point, is mandatory add another dir to shell path.

bash

set -U fish_user_paths ~/.android/platform-tools

NOTE: in flutter 2.10.* and higher is mandatory used android-29 platform version.

bash

sdkmanager --install "platforms;android-29"

After that, accept all Android licenses.

bash

flutter doctor --android-licences

Android emulator

I strongly recommend use Genymotion, it's reliable and more lighter than qemu emulator.

Setting up flutter environment in Linux ​