Flutter - 01. Installation
Flutter is an open-source cross-platform mobile development framework created by Google. It lets you build beautiful Android and iOS apps simultaneously while maintaining native performance. Since it's built by Google and runs on Android Studio, it's highly reliable.
Flutter uses a language called Dart, which has syntax nearly identical to C-family languages and Java, so it should be fairly approachable.
Installation
Flutter SDK Official Site -
Head to the link above. Click "Get Started" and download the file corresponding to your computer's OS.
Extract the downloaded zip file to a suitable location. I extracted it to my D drive since it has plenty of storage.
Open Control Panel > System and Security > System, click the "Advanced system settings" tab, and in the System Properties window that appears, click the "Environment Variables" button.
The reason we set environment variables is to avoid the hassle of navigating to the extracted folder every time to run the Flutter executable. This way, typing flutter in cmd will automatically locate and run it.
To do this, in the Environment Variables window, select "Path" under System variables and click Edit. You'll see a window like this — don't worry about the existing entries. I have a lot because of the various programs I use, but typically there are only a few.
Click the "New" button and paste the path. Since the Flutter executable lives in the bin folder, copy and paste the bin folder path.
Once pasted, click OK. Open cmd, type flutter, and press Enter. If you see a message like the one below, you're good to go.
Now let's fire up Android Studio. (If you don't have it installed, go install it and come back. There are plenty of installation guides online, so I won't cover that here.)
Click the "Configure" dropdown in the bottom right, then launch SDK Manager. When this window appears, install all the Android versions you want to support.
Since this takes a significant amount of time, if you're just learning, it's best to download only your phone's version. Once the download completes, go back to the previous screen.
Click the Configure dropdown and select Plugins. Search for "Flutter" and you'll find the plugin from flutter.dev. Click it, install it, restart the IDE, then click it again once the changes take effect.
After a moment, Android Studio will close and reopen. You should now see the "Start a new Flutter project" button.
Open cmd, type flutter doctor, and press Enter. Flutter Doctor is a diagnostic command that checks whether your environment is properly configured for Flutter development.
Blue checkmarks mean you're good to go; yellow exclamation marks mean something needs attention. Let's resolve the unready items one by one.
The Android licenses section says no licenses are accepted. Read the instructions — enter the command shown in the red box to resolve it. After typing it and pressing Enter, you'll see license agreement prompts. Just press y to accept all of them.
Run Flutter Doctor again and press Enter. You should see the first yellow exclamation mark has changed to a green checkmark.
The remaining two items stay the same — they're only required if you're using VS Code as your IDE. We'll be using Android Studio.
If your machine is a bit underpowered and Android Studio feels too heavy, developing with VS Code is a viable alternative, though it involves some extra setup. The last item about device connection can be handled through Android Studio, so you can leave it as-is.