An example of how to package a Flutter application as a Flatpak for distribution on Linux, using the default counter example app.
The necessary configuration files are in the root of the repository for ease of demonstration:
com.example.FlutterApp.desktop
-- desktop menu / icon integrationicon.svg
-- app's iconcom.example.FlutterApp.json
-- Flatpak manifest, instructions on how to build / assemble the flatpakcom.example.FlutterApp.metainfo.xml
-- AppStream metadata file that contains the information about the app that would be presented on an app store like Flathub
- flatpak
- flatpak-builder
On ubuntu:
sudo apt install flatpak flatpak-builder
Also required: Flathub setup
Note: Building a flatpak should be done in a predictable environment or it may fail.
There is a GitHub action for this purpose, which is demonstrated in this repo. This action's page also lists the docker containers it uses.
If you fork this example repo you can run the example workflow, and install the
.flatpak
file it generates withflatpak install <path-to-.flatpak>
.
Get Flutter project dependencies:
flutter pub get
Build linux version:
flutter build linux
Compress linux build:
tar -C build/linux/x64/release/bundle -cvf FlutterApp-Linux-Portable.tar.gz .
Instruct flatpak-builder
to use the manifest to do a flatpak build:
flatpak-builder --force-clean build-dir com.example.FlutterApp.json
When this succeeds you can proceed to submit to an app store like Flathub.