Getting Started
Welcome to Shorebird! 👋
In this guide, we’ll walk you through setting up Shorebird and integrating it into your app in just a few minutes.
The first thing you’ll need to do is sign up for a Shorebird account. This will allow you to use the Shorebird CLI to manage your apps.
To create an account, head over to the Shorebird Console and authenticate with one of the available authentication methods. Once you’ve authenticated, you will have a free Shorebird account.
Next, let’s install the Shorebird CLI on your machine.
To install the Shorebird command line interface (CLI):
Open a terminal and run:
Open a PowerShell terminal and run:
This installs shorebird
into ~/.shorebird/bin
and adds it to your PATH
. It
also installs a copy of Flutter and Dart inside
~/.shorebird/bin/cache/flutter
. The copy of Flutter is slightly modified to
add Shorebird code push and is not intended to be added to your PATH
. You can
continue to use the versions of Flutter and Dart you already have installed.
Shorebird can also be manually installed, allowing users to choose where the installation will be placed.
In order to do so, in a terminal, inside the folder where Shorebird should be installed at, run:
Add the bin
folder from the repository you just cloned into your PATH
.
Once the installation has completed, shorebird
should be available in your
terminal:
You can use the shorebird doctor
to ensure things are setup correctly:
Example output:
Once you have registered and installed the CLI, you’re ready to use code push!
Start by creating a new Flutter app:
As with any Flutter app, you can verify this created the standard Counter app by
following the instructions printed by flutter create
:
To make this a Shorebird app, run:
This will create a shorebird.yaml
file in the root of your project. This file
contains your Shorebird app_id
. Your app_id
is not secret and can be
checked into source control and freely shared.
This will also run shorebird doctor
to ensure everything is set up correctly.
We will create a release using the unmodified Counter app. Run:
When prompted, use the suggested version number (1.0.0+1
), and enter y
when
asked if you would like to continue.
To preview the release with Shorebird (that is, with Shorebird’s fork of the Flutter engine), run:
Now kill the app on your device or emulator.
We will now make a small change to the Counter app. In lib/main.dart
, change
the app theme’s primarySwatch
from blue to green:
After making this change, save the file and run:
Launch the app from your device or emulator. The app will still have the original blue theme, but it will be downloading the patch we just created in the background. Kill and launch the app again, and the app will be green! 🎉
Shorebird has an active Discord where we’re happy to help you with any questions https://discord.gg/shorebird