Continuous Integration for Flutter with GitHub Actions

Introduction

Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD) for Flutter streamlines your app delivery pipeline, automating builds, tests, and releases. By integrating Flutter CI/CD into your workflow, you catch bugs earlier, maintain code quality, and reduce manual overhead. GitHub Actions offers a powerful, hosted environment to orchestrate your Flutter workflows, from unit tests to automated Firebase deployments. This intermediate tutorial walks you through setting up CI/CD in Flutter with GitHub Actions, so you can confidently ship updates faster.

Configuring your Flutter project

Before authoring workflows, ensure your Flutter project is CI-ready:

• Add unit and widget tests

• Lock dependency versions in pubspec.lock

• Include a flutter_test dependency

• Commit a minimal test to validate CI pipelines

Example Dart unit test (test/counter_test.dart):

import 'package:flutter_test/flutter_test.dart';

void main() {
  test('Counter increments', () {
    var count = 0;
    count++;
    expect(count, 1);
  });
}

• Run flutter test locally to confirm the test suite passes. • Ensure any code generation (e.g., JSON serializable) is handled in pre-build scripts.

Building and testing with GitHub Actions

Create a workflow file .github/workflows/flutter-ci.yml. This defines your CI/CD in Flutter:

name: Flutter CI/CD
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  build-and-test:
    name: Build & Test
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout source
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Setup Flutter
        uses: subosito/flutter-action@v2
        with:
          flutter-version: 'stable'

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: flutter pub get

      - name: Run analyzer
        run: flutter analyze --no-fatal-infos

      - name: Run tests
        run: flutter test --coverage

      - name: Upload coverage report
        if: always()
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
        with:
          name: coverage
          path

Key points:

• subosito/flutter-action sets up the Flutter SDK.

• flutter analyze enforces static analysis.

• flutter test --coverage generates a coverage report, enabling you to integrate code coverage tools.

This job nails down CI in Flutter. On every push or pull request, your code is linted, tested, and any regressions surface immediately.

Deploying Flutter apps automatically

After successful build and test, you can add a deployment job. Here’s how to automate an Android APK build and deploy it as a GitHub Release asset:

  release-apk:
    name: Build & Release APK
    needs: build-and-test
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Setup Flutter
        uses: subosito/flutter-action@v2
        with:
          flutter-version: 'stable'

      - name: Build APK
        run: flutter build apk --release

      - name: Create Release
        id: create_release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v1
        with:
          tag_name: ${{ github.ref_name }}
          name: Release ${{ github.ref_name }}
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

      - name: Upload APK to Release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v1
        with:
          files: build/app/outputs/flutter-apk/app-release.apk
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN

Alternatively, for deploying to Firebase App Distribution or Google Play, integrate the Firebase CLI or Fastlane in a similar fashion:

• Authenticate via service account key stored in GitHub Secrets. • Run firebase appdistribution:distribute or fastlane supply steps.

This fully automates your Flutter continuous integration and deployment pipeline, shipping new versions without manual interaction.

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Conclusion

Integrating CI/CD for Flutter with GitHub Actions elevates your development process by enforcing quality gates, executing tests, and streamlining releases. Whether you’re deploying APKs, iOS builds, or distributing via Firebase, GitHub Actions provides a flexible platform to configure workflows as code. As you scale, you can extend these pipelines with code coverage uploads, Slack notifications, and parallel builds for multiple Flutter flavors or platforms.