Flutter is an open source framework by Google for building beautiful, natively compiled, multi-platform applications from a single codebase.

I use Flutter for building many of the apps I develop for mobile and desktop. Like other software ecosystems, my projects require different flutter versions, so I use fvm for managing versions.

This guide will show you how to install the Flutter SDK that will act as the default version of flutter and how to setup fvm.

Setup the main Flutter SDK

Install on Pop!_OS (Linux)

According to this GitHub issue on the Flutter repo, there is currently a problem with the Flutter SDK and Pop!_OS. As a workaround, install these dependencies:

sudo apt-get install clang cmake ninja-build pkg-config libgtk-3-dev liblzma-dev libstdc++-12-dev

Then install the SDK locally:

# Prepare directory
mkdir -p ~/.local/share
cd ~/.local/share

# Checkout the stable branch
git clone https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git -b stable

Edit your PATH to include $HOME/.local/share/flutter/bin. For example, if you use zsh:

export PATH=$HOME/bin:$HOME/.local/share/flutter/bin:$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH

Then restart your terminal.

Setup fvm (macOS and Linux)

If you don't already have brew installed, install it suing this command:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Then, install fvm with:

brew tap leoafarias/fvm
brew install fvm

IDE/Editor Configuration

VS Code

Create .vscode folder inside your project's folder.

Then, create or edit a .vscode/settings.json file and add these:

{
  "dart.flutterSdkPath": ".fvm/flutter_sdk",
  // Remove .fvm files from search
  "search.exclude": {
    "**/.fvm": true
  },
  // Remove from file watching
  "files.watcherExclude": {
    "**/.fvm": true
  }
}

This will auto-switch the flutter version with fvm if one is configured.