Navigating Your Flutter Project’s Health with ‘Flutter Doctor’
Tags: dart, flutter, mobile
Published: 2023-10-15 16:39:17



Flutter development environment can often at times be difficult to set up. As a mobile application developer, making sure that your development environment is optimal and ready is very crucial. Moving along alone will at times be scary and tiresome. Flutter introduced a tool that can help developers setup their environment. Flutter doctor is used as a computer diagnosis tool to ensure that the developer has installed flutter in the right way.

**What is flutter doctor?**
Flutter Doctor is a command line tool used for many purposes and scenarios; system and dependency configuration, development environment examination and provision of comprehensive health report. With flutter doctor, one is able to check and assess issues in flutter before they escalate. Flutter doctor will provide you with a comprehensive health report.

**Why use flutter doctor?**
**1.Dependency management** – Every flutter project you get to work on relies on a huge number of dependencies. This means that making sure that these dependencies are up to date, properly installed, and compatible with existing project is very crucial especially with flutter updates that happens more than often. With ‘flutter doctor’, one is able to identify mitigate discrepancies and conflict that may occur for smooth commencement with the project.

**2.Missing Dependencies** – while running a flutter project you may at times forget to install certain dependencies or libraries required to run the project. On running ‘flutter doctor’ on your IDE you are able to identify, handle and resolve the issue. It explains the steps that you may need to take in order to solve the ongoing issue. 

**3.Platform Setups**– being a cross platform development language, flutter supports different platforms including IOS and Android. Setting up these platforms may prove difficult especially for new developers getting into flutter. ‘flutter doctor’ does not only highlight the issues with the setup but also offers clear guidance on how to resolve them for smooth cross platform development. As flutter keeps on updating it is also very crucial to always keep checking on the state of the project as often as possible.

**4.Version Control** – This is crucial for management of flutter SDK versions. Different flutter project may work on different flutter versions. Version control assists in making sure that the project runs on the most stable version. A mismatch between flutter files and flutter SDK may lead to issues during collaboration and deployment. On running ‘flutter doctor’ it alerts you as a developer of any inconsistencies within your project and guides you accordingly on how to align the project.

**5.Environmental checks** – on running ‘flutter doctor’ for this functionality, a developer is able to view a detailed report of the flutter installation in the device, address issues raised and upgrade flutter installation when need arises. It also assists in checking whether android studio has installed and ensuring that the emulator is operational. This helps minimize disruptions during development.

**Running flutter doctor on Mac Terminal**
In mac, run ‘flutter doctor’ within the inbuilt terminal application. You can access the terminal by:
•	Opening Spotlight Search by pressing command and space buttons.
•	You can the search the Terminal and press the Return key.

Once the Terminal is open, you may now type the following command and hit enter:
 `Flutter doctor -v`

The output should now be visible in the Terminal.

**Running flutter doctor in windows command prompt.**
You can open the command prompt by:
•	Clicking the windows and ‘R’ button at the same time. 
•	Typing CMD and pressing Enter.
One the command prompt is open, we can type the following and hit enter:
`flutter doctor -v`

Flutter doctor will then display its output in the prompt window. 

**Running ‘flutter doctor’**
Running flutter command to diagnose your project is simple and simple done by running the command in your terminal: 
`Flutter doctor`

This will perform a series of checks like checking your flutter installation, verifying required components and examining dependencies required for your projects.


It is clear that tech is always evolving ad will always have something different each and every day. As a developer one should always be in touch with existing technologies and trends that may also assist in making your work easier. It is also important to make yourself and your work more efficient and paramount. Flutter doctor will empower you as a developer and increase your productivity making you more proactive. By incorporating “flutter doctor” in your development journey and projects, it will not only help in detecting bugs, but will also help create and robust and highly productive environment while fostering innovation. Next time you embark on your flutter project remember to diagnose first with “flutter doctor” to monitor your projects health and state. 

**Happy Coding!!**