Flutter documentation website
The documentation site for the Flutter framework, built with Eleventy and hosted on Firebase.
We welcome contributions and feedback on our website. Please file a request in our issue tracker or create a pull request. For simple changes (such as tweaking some text), it's easiest to make changes using the GitHub UI.
If you have an issue with the
API docs on api.flutter.dev,
please file those issues on
the flutter/flutter repo,
not on this (flutter/website) repo.
The API docs are embedded in Flutter's source code,
so the engineering team handles those.
We love it when the community gets involved in improving our docs! But here are a few notes to keep in mind before you submit a PR:
- When triaging issues, we sometimes label an issue with the tag PRs welcome. But we welcome PRs on other issues as well— it doesn't have to be tagged with that label.
- Please don't run our docs through Grammarly (or similar) and submit those changes as a PR.
- We follow the Google Developer Documentation Style Guidelines — for example, don't use "i.e." or "e.g.", avoid writing in first person, and avoid writing in future tense. You can start with the style guide highlights or the word list, or use the search bar that's at the top of every style guide page.
We truly thank you for your willingness and helpfulness in keeping the website docs up to date!
To update this site, fork the repo, make your changes, and generate a pull request. For small, contained changes (such as style and typo fixes), you probably don't need to build this site. Often you can make changes using the GitHub UI. If needed, we can stage the changes automatically in your pull request.
Important
If you are cloning this repository locally, follow the below instruction on cloning with its submodule.
If your change involves code samples, adds/removes pages, or affects navigation, do consider building and test your work before submitting.
If you want or need to build the site, follow the steps below.
For changes beyond simple text and CSS tweaks, we recommend running the site locally to enable an edit-refresh cycle.
Install the following tools to build and develop the site:
The latest stable release of Flutter, which includes Dart, is required to build the site and run its tooling. If you don't have Flutter or need to update, follow the instructions at Install Flutter or Upgrading Flutter.
If you already have Flutter installed, verify it's on your path and already the latest stable version:
flutter --versionThe latest stable LTS release of Node.js is required to build the site.
If you don't have Node.js or need to update, download your
computer's corresponding version and follow the instructions
from the Node.js download archive.
If you prefer, you can use a version manager such as nvm,
and run nvm install from the repository's root directory.
If you already have Node installed, verify it's available on your path
and already the latest stable version (currently 22.12 or later):
node --versionIf your version is out of date, follow the update instructions for how you originally installed it.
Note
This repository has git submodules, which affects how you clone it. The GitHub documentation has general help on forking and cloning repos.
If you're not a member of the Flutter organization, we recommend you create a fork of this repo under your own account, and then submit a PR from that fork.
Once you have a fork (or you're a Flutter org member), choose one of the following submodule-cloning techniques:
-
Clone the repo and its submodule at the same time using the
--recurse-submodulesoption:git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/flutter/website.git -
If you've already cloned the repo without its submodule, then run this command from the root of the repository:
git submodule update --init --recursive
Note
At any time during development
you can use the git submodule command to refresh submodules:
git pull && git submodule update --init --recursiveBefore you continue setting up the site infrastructure, verify the correct versions of Flutter and Node.js are set up and available by following the instructions in Get the prerequisites.
-
Optional: After cloning the repo and its submodules, create a branch for your changes:
git checkout -b <BRANCH_NAME> -
From the root directory of the repository, fetch the site's Dart dependencies.
dart pub get -
Optional: We recommend you use
pnpm, but you can also usenpm. Installpnpm, an alternative, efficient package manager for npm packages. If you already havepnpm, verify you have the latest stable version.node --versionIf you don't already have
pnpminstalled, we recommend usingcorepackto install and managepnpmversions, sincecorepackis bundled with most installations of Node. If you installednodeusing Homebrew, you'll need to install corepack separately:brew install corepackIf you haven't used
corepackbefore, you'll need to first enable it withcorepack enable. Then, to install the correctpnpmversion, from the root directory of the repository, runcorepack install:corepack enable; corepack install
To install
pnpmwithout usingcorepack, you can use your preferred installation method. -
(optional) Once you have
pnpminstalled and setup, fetch the site's npm dependencies usingpnpm install. We highly recommend you usepnpm, but you can also usenpm.pnpm installRerun
pnpm installwhenever you incorporate the latest changes to themainbranch or if you experience dependency or import errors when building the site. -
From the root directory, run the
dash_sitetool to validate your setup and learn about the available commands../dash_site --help -
From the root directory, serve the site locally.
./dash_site serveThis command generates and serves the site on a local port that's printed to your terminal.
-
View your changes in the browser by navigating to http://localhost:4000.
Note the port might be different if
4000is taken.If you want to check the raw, generated HTML output and structure, view the
_sitedirectory in a file explorer or an IDE. -
Make your changes to the local repo.
The site should automatically rebuild on most changes, but if something doesn't update, exit the process and rerun the command. Improvements to this functionality are planned. Please open a new issue to track the issue if this occurs.
-
Commit your changes to the branch and submit your PR.
If your change is large, or you'd like to test it, consider validating your changes.
Tip
To find additional commands that you can run,
run ./dash_site --help from the repository's root directory.
If you've made changes to the code in the /examples or /tool directories,
commit your work, then run the following command to
verify it is up to date and matches the site standards.
./dash_site check-allIf this script reports any errors or warnings,
then address those issues and rerun the command.
If you have any issues, leave a comment on your issue or pull request,
and we'll try our best to help you.
You can also chat with us on the #hackers-devrel channel
on the Flutter contributors Discord!
A build that fails with the error
Error: Some code excerpts needed to be updated!
means that one or more code excerpts in the site Markdown files
aren't identical to the code regions declared
in the corresponding .dart files.
The .dart files are the source of truth for code snippets,
and the preceding <?code-excerpt> instructions in Markdown files specify
how the snippets are copied from the .dart files.
To resolve this error and update the Markdown snippets to match,
from the root of the website directory,
run ./dash_site refresh-excerpts.
To learn more about creating, editing, and using code excerpts, check out the excerpt updater package documentation.
Submitted pull requests can be automatically staged by a site maintainer. If you'd like to stage the site yourself though, you can build a full version and upload it to Firebase.
- If you don't already have a Firebase project,
-
Navigate to the Firebase Console and create your own Firebase project (for example,
flutter-dev-staging). -
Head back to your local terminal and verify that you are logged in.
firebase login -
Ensure that your project exists and activate that project:
firebase projects:list firebase use <your-project>
-
From the root directory of the repository, build the site:
./dash_site buildThis builds the site and copies it to your local
_sitedirectory. If that directory previously existed, it will be replaced. -
Deploy to your activated Firebase project's default hosting site:
firebase deploy --only hosting -
Navigate to your PR on GitHub and include the link of the staged version. Do consider adding a reference to the commit you staged, so that reviewers know if any further changes have been made.