Building a Flutter app

How to build a Flutter app with codemagic.yaml

Setting up a Flutter project

The apps you have available in Codemagic are listed on the Applications page. See how to add additional apps here.

1. On the Applications page, click Set up build next to the app you want to start building.
2. On the popup, select Flutter App as the project type and click Continue.
3. Then you can choose to either set up your builds in the codemagic.yaml file or select the Workflow Editor tab to configure the builds in the UI.

codemagic.yaml is a highly customizable configuration file that you can use to build, test and publish Flutter apps, widgets, and Flutter or Dart packages. The Workflow Editor is a quick way to get started building standard Flutter applications.

You can simultaneously set up workflows both in codemagic.yaml and the Workflow Editor. However, when a codemagic.yaml is detected in the repository, it is automatically used for configuring builds that are triggered in response to the events defined in the file and any configuration in the Flutter workflow editor is ignored.

Exporting configuration from the Flutter workflow editor

You can get started with YAML easily if you have an existing project set up in Codemagic UI.

1. Navigate to your app workflow settings.
2. In the Configuration as code section on the right sidebar, click Download configuration.

Building with YAML

1. In order to use codemagic.yaml for build configuration in Codemagic, commit the file to the root directory of your repository.
2. Back in app settings in Codemagic, select the codemagic.yaml tab.
3. Scan for the codemagic.yaml file by selecting a branch to scan and clicking the Check for configuration file button at the top of the page. Note that you can have different configuration files in different branches.
4. If a codemagic.yaml file is found in that branch, you can click Start your first build and select the branch and workflow to build.
5. Finally, click Start new build to build the app.

Android builds

Set up local properties

- echo "flutter.sdk=$HOME/programs/flutter" > "$FCI_BUILD_DIR/android/local.properties"

Building .apk

- flutter build apk --release

Building universal .apk(s) from existing app bundle(s) with user-specified keys

If your app settings in Codemagic have building Android App Bundles enabled, we will automatically include a script for generating a signed app-universal.apk during the YAML export. If you are creating a YAML file from a scratch, add the following script to receive the .apk file(s):

- android-app-bundle build-universal-apk \
  --bundle 'project_directory/build/**/outputs/**/*.aab' \
  --ks /tmp/keystore.keystore \
  --ks-pass $FCI_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD \
  --ks-key-alias $FCI_KEY_ALIAS \
  --key-pass $FCI_KEY_PASSWORD

Please make sure to wrap the --bundle pattern in single quotes. If --bundle option is not specified, default glob pattern **/*.aab will be used.

More information about Android code signing can be found here.

iOS builds

Building an unsigned application .app

- flutter build ios --debug --no-codesign

Building a signed iOS application archive .ipa

- xcode-project use-profiles
- xcode-project build-ipa --workspace ios/Runner.xcworkspace --scheme Runner

Read more about the different schemes in Apple’s documentation.

Note: If you are using Flutter version 1.24.0-6.0 or higher, the recommended command for building an .ipa archive is flutter build ipa as shown below. Read more about it in Flutter’s documentation.

- xcode-project use-profiles
- flutter build ipa --export-options-plist=/Users/builder/export_options.plist

Web builds

- name: Build web
  script: |
    flutter config --enable-web
    flutter build web --release
    cd build/web
    7z a -r ../web.zip ./*    

Testing, code signing and publishing a Flutter app

To test, code sign and publish a Flutter app:

• Testing examples for a flutter app can be found here.
• All iOS and Android applications need to be signed before release. Different script examples are available here.
• All generated artifacts can be published to external services. The available integrations currently are email, Slack, Google Play and App Store Connect. It is also possible to publish elsewhere with custom scripts. Script examples for different options are available here.