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Shorebird

Initialize Shorebird

To configure an existing Flutter project to use Shorebird, use shorebird init at the root of a Flutter project:

Terminal window
shorebird init

This does three things:

  1. Tells Shorebird to create a unique app_id for your app. This app_id is how Shorebird identifies your app and knows which updates to send to it. It does not need to be kept secret.
  2. Creates a shorebird.yaml file in your project’s root directory. shorebird.yaml contains the app_id mentioned above.
  3. Adds the shorebird.yaml to the assets section of your pubspec.yaml file, ensuring shorebird.yaml is bundled with your app’s assets and is available to the Shorebird updater at runtime.

You can safely commit these changes, they will have no affect on your app when not using Shorebird.

Example output for an app named shorebird_test:

Terminal window
$ shorebird init
✓ Detecting product flavors (0.6s)
? How should we refer to this app? (shorebird_test) shorebird_test
✓ Shorebird is up-to-date (0.6s)
✓ Flutter install is correct (4.5s)
✓ AndroidManifest.xml files contain INTERNET permission (23ms)


No issues detected!


🐦 Shorebird initialized successfully!


✅ A shorebird app has been created.
✅ A "shorebird.yaml" has been created.
✅ The "pubspec.yaml" has been updated to include "shorebird.yaml" as an asset.


Reference the following commands to get started:


📦 To create a new release use: "shorebird release".
🚀 To push an update use: "shorebird patch".
👀 To preview a release use: "shorebird preview".


For more information about Shorebird, visit https://shorebird.dev

The generated shorebird.yaml should look similar to:

# This file is used to configure the Shorebird updater used by your application.
# Learn more at https://shorebird.dev
# This file should be checked into version control.


# This is the unique identifier assigned to your app.
# It is used by your app to request the correct patches from Shorebird servers.
app_id: 8c846e87-1461-4b09-8708-170d78331aca

If your application contains flavors, shorebird init will create an app per flavor and shorebird.yaml will include all flavors and their corresponding app_ids:

# This file is used to configure the Shorebird updater used by your application.
# Learn more at https://shorebird.dev
# This file should be checked into version control.


# This is the unique identifier assigned to your app.
# It is used by your app to request the correct patches from Shorebird servers.
app_id: 864ab1b0-ba78-4b15-990a-a63cec35a41b
flavors:
  development: 864ab1b0-ba78-4b15-990a-a63cec35a41b
  production: 6b6e6631-4fbe-4645-8d9d-d5247656d975

The app_id is a required field in every shorebird.yaml. In the case of flavors, app_id will default to the first flavor and will be overwritten at build time to the corresponding flavor’s app_id.

Shorebird code push requires the internet permission to be added to your AndroidManifest.xml file (located in android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml). This is required for the app to be able to communicate with the Shorebird servers to download patches.

shorebird init will add this permission if it is not already present.

<manifest ...>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
...
</manifest>