How to Install Flutter on Linux

How to Install Flutter on Linux

Are you working on how to install Flutter and get Google’s framework running on Linux? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with this guide. 

Flutter is an open-source framework developed and maintained by Google. It is also mainly used to build native apps which can be compiled to target multiple platforms from a single codebase. Flutter code can also be compiled to ARM or Intel machines or JavaScript.

Flutter: The Basics

It is a Software Development Kit (SDK) used to develop cross-platform apps like Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, and even browsers. Flutter was first released in 2017 and then been actively used by and adopted by the developer community because of its multiplatform nature.

One of its first names was “Sky” and it used to only run on Android OS. It is based on the Dart programming language, which is in itself like JavaScript. In mid-2020, Dart SDK and Flutter 1.17.0 added support to Metal API. Which improved performance on iOS by around 50%. 

Architecture

  • Dart platform
  • Flutter engine
  • Design-specific widgets
  • Flutter Development Tools

Flutter is based on a central idea called Widgets. These widgets can also be combined to form the entire UI. And they also define basic components like buttons, menus, navbar, font, color, padding, etc. Flutter does not use OEM widgets but provides its own that look native to Android or iOS apps.

These widgets are then compiled into their native target platform components.

Some benefits of Flutter are:

  • A single codebase saves time and money
  • It boasts excellent performance
  • Development is also fast
  • Has cross-platform compatibility
  • Is open source

Prerequisites

  • Linux (64-bit OS)
  • Free disk space, more than 600 MB excluding IDE/tools
  • Some command tools required are :bash, curl, file, git 2.x, mkdir, rm, unzip, which, xz-utils, zip. These tools are also available by default in most Linux OS.
  • Some libraries are libGLU.so.1 and mesa-libGLU.

Installing Flutter With Snap

Install Snap

The first thing to install Flutter on Linux is to install Snap. To check if you have Snap installed or not, you can type the following command into the terminal:

 $ snap

And if it’s already installed, you should see output like this one:

snap installed output

If not, you have to type the following command to install it:

$ sudo apt install snapd

With everything set, you can now install Flutter on Linux with the following command:

$sudo snap install flutter --classic

Install Flutter on Linux manually

If snapd is not installed, you can also alternatively install it with the following steps.

Download Flutter SDK

You can download Flutter SDK here. And also remember to download the latest stable release.

Extract the FIle

Extract the downloaded file in the location of your choice with the following command:

$ cd ~/dev
$ tar xd ~/Downloads/flutter_linux3.0.5-stable.tar.xz

Or you can directly clone the git repo from here using the following command:

$ git clone https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git

Now, you have to set the path variable for the current terminal (temporarily) like this:

$ export PATH=”$PATH: `pwd`/flutter/bin”

To permanently add a path, run the following command:

$ export PATH="$PATH:[PATH_OF_FLUTTER_GIT_DIRECTORY]/bin"

Either way, now you can verify with the following command:

$ which flutter

Output may look like this:

verify path flutter

Configuring with flutter doctor

Flutter provides an automatic configuring tool to check if all dependencies are installed or not. The following command will configure all dependencies. 

Input:

$ flutter doctor -v

And the output should look like this:

Install Flutter on Linux

And with that, you are all set with flutter. However, you can see there that Android Studio and Java are not configured. And these components are essential for you to run the Android apps you developed. You can consider them as IDE.

Install and Configure Java

To run and use Android Studio, you need to have a Java Development Kit, which provides JRE. JRE is a java run time environment that provides a place for java programs to run after compilation. 

To install the latest java stable version (V8), run the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get update 
$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

Now, we have to set the environment variable for $JAVA_HOME. Doing this will also allow the local Java apps to run.

You have to provide a path without including the /bin directory (for us, it’s /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64). For example:

$ JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64" 
To set JAVA_HOME env var for the current user run the following command:
$ echo "JAVA_HOME=\"$JAVA_HOME\"" >> ~/.bashrc 

Now to add binaries to your path, input:

$ echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin' >> .zshrc 

Verify everything is correct by typing in:

$ source ~/.bashrc && echo $JAVA_HOME 

Now that everything is done, we can move forward to installing Android Studio and run the Flutter app in it.

Install and Configure Android Studio

First of all, download Android Studio from here.

Now open Android Studio using GUI or like this:

$ bash /usr/local/android-studio/bin/studio.sh

Either way, the install wizard will pop up. 

To add flutter, we have to click on “Plugins”

Install Flutter on Linux

Search for the official published plugin named “Flutter” by flutter.dev

Flutter Plugin

You will be asked to install the dart plugin too. Flutter is based on dart programming language, so click “OK” and restart android studio.

Now, you will be prompted by the project configuration tab. Provide the project’s name and other info, and point the “Flutter SDK” to the location where Flutter is installed on your device.

Install Flutter on Linux

Now, accept Android licenses and provide ownership to avoid build errors in the future with this command.

Input:

$ flutter doctor --android-licenses 
$ sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /home/$USER/snap/flutter 

And with that, you are all set to run Flutter on Android Studio.

In this guide, we’ve discussed what Google’s open-source framework is about, and how it can be installed on Linux. Moreover, we also detailed the basic steps to install and set up Java, along with Android Studio on the Linux system. 

If this guide helped you, please share it.

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