Installing Flutter on Ubuntu 17.10

Flutter is still in alpha release at the time of writing this. But it doesn't mean that its not ready for you to dabble with.

Most people that I've seen using Flutter are using Flutter on a Mac or a Windows machine. However, my OS of choice is Linux running Ubuntu 17.10. So this tutorial is about how to get started with Flutter on a Linux machine, specifically Ubuntu 17.10.

Preamble...

Flutter is a new cross platform (read mobile ) development framework. Unlike other cross platform frameworks that primarily written with Javascript, flutter uses a new language called DART. Furthermore, on a mobile device flutter doesn't use a webview like the javascript counterparts.

I've got a bevy of experience with cross platform development from the javascript frameworks through to the Xamarin. Prior to using flutter, Xamarin was my standout favorite. However, with Xamarin I found that just getting access to information, tutorials and apps to learn from was very difficult (read almost impossible). As flutter is new, there appears to a be constant foray of information being delivered by developers. And, I thought this was the opportune time to try it out and go along for the ride.

My setup

I'm running Ubuntu 17.10 on a Dell Precision 5510, I also have Mac OSX and Windows available to be spun up via a virtual machine (VMware).

My Android emulation tool of choice is Genymotion.

Installing Flutter

First of all you need to clone the git repository, if you don't have git - then get it (sudo apt-get install git). To clone the repository :


cd ~

git clone -b alpha https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git

Next you will need to make sure that the path is within the environment variables. For this I updated the .bashrc in my home folder to reflect the path of flutter.

To do this type the following in a command terminal :
gedit ~/.bashrc &

add the following line at the end of the file (assuming that git had cloned flutter into the path ~/flutter (i.e a flutter directory within your home) :

export PATH=~/flutter/bin:$PATH

Now that everything has been setup, you need to run flutter doctor. The flutter doctor inspects your environment and lets you know what else is missing. To execute flutter doctor type flutter doctor in a terminal. 

If you receive any errors which you probably will, then you will need to one or more of the following :
- Install Android Studio and then the Android SDKs via the Android SDK manager
- Install IntelliJ (or a similar editor)
- Get a connected Device working such as via the Android Device Manager from the Android Studio or simply install Genymotion.

Good Luck