In order to start your Flutter adventure, you will need a few tools:
- A PC with a recent Windows version, or a Mac with a recent version of the macOS or Linux operating system. You can also use a Chrome OS machine, with a few tweaks. Currently, the only way to build apps that target iOS devices is using a Mac, unless you use a third-party service. Of course, you can write your code on any operating system, but the .ipa file, which is the iOS installation file, can only be created from a Mac.
- A GitHub account.
- An Android/iOS setup. You'll need to set up your Android and iOS environments to build apps.
- The Flutter SDK. It's free, light, and open source.
- Physical device/emulator/simulator. In order to try your code, you will need an Android or iOS device. Alternatively, you can also install an Android emulator or iOS simulator.
- Your favorite editor. The supported editors at this time are:
- Android Studio/IntelliJ IDEA
- Visual Studio Code
Actually, you could use any other text editor, combined with the Flutter CLI, but using the supported editors will make your life much easier as you get code completion, debugging support, and several other advantages.
The detailed steps for setting up your environment to build Flutter Projects are given in the Appendix section.
You can find the code files of this chapter on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Google-Flutter-Projects.
Let's get started with some basic Dart concepts!