Flutter Version Manager

Inspired by nvm

Table of Contents

• Intro
• About
• Installing and Updating
  • Install & Update Script
    • Additional Notes
    • Troubleshooting on Linux
    • Troubleshooting on macOS
  • Verify Installation
  • Important Notes
  • Git Install
  • Manual Install
  • Manual Upgrade
• Usage
  • System Version of Flutter
  • Listing Versions
  • Restoring PATH
  • Use a mirror of flutter archives
  • Link a version
• Environment variables
• Bash Completion
  • Usage
• Compatibility Issues
• Uninstalling / Removal
  • Manual Uninstall
• macOS Troubleshooting
• License

Intro

fvm allows you to quickly install and use different versions of flutter via the command line.

Example:

$ fvm use 2.10.3
Now using flutter 2.10.3
$ flutter --version
Flutter 2.10.3 • channel stable • https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git
Framework • revision 7e9793dee1 (9 months ago) • 2022-03-02 11:23:12 -0600
Engine • revision bd539267b4
Tools • Dart 2.16.1 • DevTools 2.9.2
$ fvm install 3.3.8
Now 3.3.8 is installed

Simple as that!

About

fvm is a version manager for flutter. fvm works on any POSIX-compliant shell (sh, dash, ksh, zsh, bash), in particular on these platforms: unix, macOS, and windows WSL.

Installing and Updating

Install & Update Script

To install or update fvm, you should run the install script. To do that, you may either download and run the script manually, or use the following cURL or Wget command:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fvm-sh/fvm/v0.5.0/install.sh | bash

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fvm-sh/fvm/v0.5.0/install.sh | bash

Running either of the above commands downloads a script and runs it. The script clones the fvm repository to ~/.fvm, and attempts to add the source lines from the snippet below to the correct profile file (~/.bash_profile, ~/.zshrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.bashrc).

export FVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.fvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/fvm")"
[ -s "$FVM_DIR/fvm.sh" ] && \. "$FVM_DIR/fvm.sh" # This loads fvm

Additional Notes

• If the environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is present, it will place the fvm files there.

• You can add --no-use to the end of the above script (...fvm.sh --no-use) to postpone using fvm until you manually use it.

• You can customize the install directory, profile using the FVM_DIR, PROFILE. Eg: curl ... | FVM_DIR="path/to/fvm". Ensure that the FVM_DIR does not contain a trailing slash.

• The installer can use git, curl, or wget to download fvm, whichever is available.

Troubleshooting on Linux

On Linux, after running the install script, if you get fvm: command not found or see no feedback from your terminal after you type command -v fvm, simply close your current terminal, open a new terminal, and try verifying again. Alternatively, you can run the following commands for the different shells on the command line:

bash: source ~/.bashrc

zsh: source ~/.zshrc

ksh: . ~/.profile

These should pick up the fvm command.

Troubleshooting on macOS

Since OS X 10.9, /usr/bin/git has been preset by Xcode command line tools, which means we can't properly detect if Git is installed or not. You need to manually install the Xcode command line tools before running the install script, otherwise, it'll fail.

If you get fvm: command not found after running the install script, one of the following might be the reason:

• Since macOS 10.15, the default shell is zsh and fvm will look for .zshrc to update, none is installed by default. Create one with touch ~/.zshrc and run the install script again.

• If you use bash, the previous default shell, your system may not have .bash_profile or .bashrc files where the command is set up. Create one of them with touch ~/.bash_profile or touch ~/.bashrc and run the install script again. Then, run . ~/.bash_profile or . ~/.bashrc to pick up the fvm command.

• You have previously used bash, but you have zsh installed. You need to manually add these lines to ~/.zshrc and run . ~/.zshrc.

• You might need to restart your terminal instance or run . ~/.fvm/fvm.sh. Restarting your terminal/opening a new tab/window, or running the source command will load the command and the new configuration.

• If the above didn't help, you might need to restart your terminal instance. Try opening a new tab/window in your terminal and retry.

If the above doesn't fix the problem, you may try the following:

• If you use bash, it may be that your .bash_profile (or ~/.profile) does not source your ~/.bashrc properly. You could fix this by adding source ~/<your_profile_file> to it or follow the next step below.

• Try adding the snippet from the install section, that finds the correct fvm directory and loads fvm, to your usual profile (~/.bash_profile, ~/.zshrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.bashrc).

Note For Macs with the M1 chip, flutter started offering arm64 arch darwin archive at stable channel since version 3.0.0 and beta channel since 2.12.0-4.1.pre. If you are facing issues installing flutter using fvm, you may want to update to one of those versions or later.

Verify Installation

To verify that fvm has been installed, do:

command -v fvm

which should output fvm if the installation was successful. Please note that which fvm will not work, since fvm is a sourced shell function, not an executable binary.

Note: On Linux, after running the install script, if you get fvm: command not found or see no feedback from your terminal after you type command -v fvm, simply close your current terminal, open a new terminal, and try verifying again.

Important Notes

Note: fvm also support Windows in some cases. It should work through WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) depending on the version of WSL. It should also work with GitBash (MSYS) or Cygwin.

Note: On OS X, if you do not have Xcode installed and you do not wish to download the ~4.3GB file, you can install the Command Line Tools. You can check out this blog post on how to just that:

• How to Install Command Line Tools in OS X Mavericks & Yosemite (Without Xcode)

Homebrew installation is not supported. If you have issues with homebrew-installed fvm, please brew uninstall it, and install it using the instructions below, before filing an issue.

Git Install

If you have git installed (requires git v1.7.10+):

1. clone this repo in the root of your user profile
   • cd ~/ from anywhere then git clone https://github.com/fvm-sh/fvm.git .fvm
2. cd ~/.fvm and check out the latest version with git checkout v0.5.0
3. activate fvm by sourcing it from your shell: . ./fvm.sh

Now add these lines to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.zshrc file to have it automatically sourced upon login: (you may have to add to more than one of the above files)

export FVM_DIR="$HOME/.fvm"
[ -s "$FVM_DIR/fvm.sh" ] && \. "$FVM_DIR/fvm.sh"  # This loads fvm
[ -s "$FVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$FVM_DIR/bash_completion"  # This loads fvm bash_completion

Manual Install

For a fully manual install, execute the following lines to first clone the fvm repository into $HOME/.fvm, and then load fvm:

export FVM_DIR="$HOME/.fvm" && (
  git clone https://github.com/fvm-sh/fvm.git "$FVM_DIR"
  cd "$FVM_DIR"
  git checkout `git describe --abbrev=0 --tags --match "v[0-9]*" $(git rev-list --tags --max-count=1)`
) && \. "$FVM_DIR/fvm.sh"

Now add these lines to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.zshrc file to have it automatically sourced upon login: (you may have to add to more than one of the above files)

export FVM_DIR="$HOME/.fvm"
[ -s "$FVM_DIR/fvm.sh" ] && \. "$FVM_DIR/fvm.sh" # This loads fvm
[ -s "$FVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$FVM_DIR/bash_completion"  # This loads fvm bash_completion

Manual Upgrade

For manual upgrade with git (requires git v1.7.10+):

1. change to the $FVM_DIR
2. pull down the latest changes
3. check out the latest version
4. activate the new version

(
  cd "$FVM_DIR"
  git fetch --tags origin
  git checkout `git describe --abbrev=0 --tags --match "v[0-9]*" $(git rev-list --tags --max-count=1)`
) && \. "$FVM_DIR/fvm.sh"

Usage

To install a specific version of flutter:

fvm install 3.3.8 # or 3.0.5, 2.5.3, etc

You can list available versions using ls-remote:

fvm ls-remote

And then in any new shell just use the installed version:

fvm use 3.3.8

System Version of Flutter

If you want to use the system-installed version of flutter, you can use the special alias "system":

fvm use system

Listing Versions

If you want to see what versions are installed:

fvm ls

If you want to see what versions are available to install:

fvm ls-remote

Restoring PATH

To restore your PATH, you can deactivate it:

fvm deactivate

Use a mirror of flutter archives

To use a mirror of the flutter archives, set $FLUTTER_STORAGE_BASE_URL:

export FLUTTER_STORAGE_BASE_URL=https://storage.flutter-io.cn
fvm install 3.3.8

FLUTTER_STORAGE_BASE_URL=https://storage.flutter-io.cn fvm install 3.3.8

Link a version

IDEs usually need flutter sdk path to provide services, you can create a soft link to a version by fvm link <version>:

fvm link 3.3.8

This will link installed 3.3.8 version path to .fvm/flutter under current directory.

Then you can config IDEs (like VS Code) with this soft link:

.vscode/settings.json

{
  "dart.flutterSdkPath": ".fvm/flutter",
}

Environment variables

fvm exposes the following environment variables:

• FVM_DIR - fvm's installation directory.

Additionally, fvm modifies PATH, and, if present, MANPATH when changing versions.

Bash Completion

To activate, you need to source bash_completion:

[[ -r $FVM_DIR/bash_completion ]] && \. $FVM_DIR/bash_completion

Put the above sourcing line just below the sourcing line for fvm in your profile (.bashrc, .bash_profile).

Usage

fvm:

$ fvm Tab

install             list-remote         uninstall           ls                  unload              current             help                list                ls-remote           use                 

fvm use:

$ fvm use Tab

3.3.8       3.0.5      2.10.3

fvm uninstall:

$ fvm uninstall Tab

3.3.8       3.0.5      2.10.3

Compatibility Issues

The following are known to cause issues:

Shell settings:

set -e

Uninstalling / Removal

Manual Uninstall

To remove fvm manually, execute the following:

$ rm -rf "$FVM_DIR"

Edit ~/.bashrc (or other shell resource config) and remove the lines below:

export FVM_DIR="$HOME/.fvm"
[ -s "$FVM_DIR/fvm.sh" ] && \. "$FVM_DIR/fvm.sh" # This loads fvm
[[ -r $FVM_DIR/bash_completion ]] && \. $FVM_DIR/bash_completion

macOS Troubleshooting

fvm flutter version not found in vim shell

If you set flutter version to a version other than your system flutter version fvm use 3.3.8 and open vim and run :!flutter --version you should see 3.3.8 if you see your system version 2.10.3. You need to run:

sudo chmod ugo-x /usr/libexec/path_helper

More on this issue in dotphiles/dotzsh.

There is one more edge case causing this issue, and that's a mismatch between the $HOME path and the user's home directory's actual name.

You have to make sure that the user directory name in $HOME and the user directory name you'd see from running ls /Users/ are capitalized the same way

To change the user directory and/or account name follow the instructions here

Homebrew makes zsh directories unsecure

zsh compinit: insecure directories, run compaudit for list.
Ignore insecure directories and continue [y] or abort compinit [n]? y

Homebrew causes insecure directories like /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions and /usr/local/share/zsh. This is not an fvm problem - it is a homebrew problem. Refer here for some solutions related to the issue.

License

See LICENSE.