triptych / flutter-desktop-embedding

Desktop implementations of the Flutter embedding API

Desktop Embedding for Flutter

The purpose of this project is to support building applications that use Flutter on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

It consists of libraries that implement Flutter's embedding API, handling drawing and mouse/keyboard input, as well as optional plugins to access other native platform functionality.

How to Use This Code

Setting Up

The tooling and build infrastructure for this project requires that you have a Flutter tree in the same parent directory as the clone of this project:

<parent dir>
  ├─ flutter (from http://github.com/flutter/flutter)
  └─ flutter-desktop-embedding (from https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop-embedding)

Alternately, you can place a .flutter_location_config file in the directory containing flutter-desktop-embedding, containing a path to the Flutter tree to use, if you prefer not to have the Flutter tree next to flutter-desktop-embedding.

Repository Structure

The library directory contains the core embedding library code. See the README there for information on building and using it.

The example directory contains an example application built using the library for each platform. If you just want to see something running, or want to see an example of how to use the library, start there.

In addition, there is:

• plugins: Plugins which provide access to additional platform functionality. These follow a similar structure to Flutter plugins. See the README for details.
• third_party: Dependencies used by this repository, beyond Flutter itself.
• tools: Tools used in the development process. Currently these are used by the build systems, but in the future developer utilities providing some functionality similar to the flutter tool may be added.

Flutter Application

Requirements

Since desktop is not a supported platform for Flutter, be sure to read the Flutter application requirements document for important information about how to set up your Flutter application for use with this library.

Debugging

Debugging of the Flutter side of a desktop application is possible, but requires a modified workflow.

Feedback and Discussion

For bug reports and specific feature requests, you can file GitHub issues. For general discussion and questions there's a project mailing list.

When submitting issues related to build errors or other bugs, please make sure to include the git hash of the Flutter checkout you are using. This will help speed up the debugging process.

Caveats

• This is not an officially supported Google product.
• This is an exploratory effort, and is not part of the Flutter project. See the Flutter FAQ for Flutter's official stance on desktop development.
• Many features that would be useful for desktop development do not exist yet. Check the plugins directory for support for native features beyond drawing and event processing. If the feature you need isn't there, file a feature request, or write a plugin!
• The Linux and Windows implementations currently use GLFW. This is not going to be the final implementation for either platform.