Start the flutter monorepo project

Basic recipe to start monorepo project for flutter

1. Install melos (more details about melos: https://melos.invertase.dev/)
   

   dart pub global activate melos
   

2. Create a project folder
   

   mkdir flutter_project
   cd flutter_project
   

3. Add melos.yaml file
   

   name: flutter_skeleton
   
   packages:
     - packages/**
     - apps/**
   
   command:
     bootstrap:
       usePubspecOverrides: true
   
   scripts:
     analyze:
       exec: flutter analyze .
     outdated:
       exec: flutter pub outdated
     test:
       exec: flutter test
   

4. Create .gitignore and add pubspec_overrides.yaml in it.

5. Create the main app
   

   mkdir apps # create dir for applications
   cd apps
   flutter create main_app
   

6. Add a library package
   

   cd .. # go back to the root dir of the project
   mkdir packages # create dir for shared packages
   cd packages 
   flutter create --template=package lib_example
   

7. Bootstrap melos
   

   melos bs # melos bootstrap
   

8. Try melos scripts added in melos.yaml file
   

   melos analyze # run analyze for all packages
   melos test # run test for all packages
   melos outdated # check outdated pub dependencies for all packages
   melos upgrade # Update dependencies for all packages
   

That's it! Now you have the monorepo project ready to start. You can open the root directory with vscode or IntelliJ(Or Android Studio). melos already bootstrapped the IntelliJ project. Nothing to do with vscode, but you can install the extension if it makes your life easier.

More information: https://melos.invertase.dev/ide-support

Use the shared package from the main app

Add the package name as a dependency in the pubspec.yaml

Something like:

dependencies:
  lib_example:
    path:../packages/lib_example

You can indicate the package version instead of the path if you ever published the package to the pub.dev. I had to put path because flutter pub outdated doesn't respect the pubspec_overrides.yaml for the local dependency for the moment.

The complete code can be found on github