Maintained by @eseidel
If you have questions not answered here, please ask (either by filing an issue or asking on Discord).
Code push, also referred to as "over the air updates" (OTA) is a cloud service we are building to enable Flutter developers to deploy updates directly to devices anywhere they have shipped Flutter. We've currently shown demos using Android, but since it's built with Flutter/Dart (and Rust) it will work anywhere Flutter works.
The easiest way to see is to watch the demo video.
Code push is a working title. We'll probably come up with some name to help differentiate it. "Code Push" is a reference to the name of a deploy feature used by the React Native community from Microsoft and Expo, neither of which support Flutter.
As of March 16th, 2023, unless you're part of the trusted tester group, there isn't anything to use or install at this time. We're focused on making sure a small group of users is successful with the product before opening it up to general availability (targeting April 2023).
If you'd like to become part of the trusted testing group, please join our mailinglist (linked from shorebird.dev) we send information on how to join there.
As of March 13th, 2023 we have a basic serving architecture in production and built out enough to service multiple simultaneous customers. We've also validated basic on-device support. We're working towards issuing our first API keys by March 20th as part of a trusted-tester program. We have an ~80% confidence on that date. You can watch our March 13th demo.
As of March 4th, 2023 we've built a demo and have the prototype working on multiple machines and Android phones.
First we're trying to get something working into user's hands. You can follow our day-to-day progress on our project board: https://github.com/orgs/shorebirdtech/projects/1/views/1
Eric intends to send out a survey to the mailing list on March 17th from which we will select the first participants in our trusted tester program beginning March 20th. You can sign-up at shorebird.dev -- and Discord.
Code push allows adding new code / replacing code on the device. Firebase Remote Config and Launch Darkly are both configuration systems. They allow you to change the configuration of your app without having to ship a new version. They are not intended to replace code.
We don't know yet. We expect the code push library to add less than one megabyte to Flutter apps.
Flutter's Hot reload is a development-time-only feature. Code push is for production.
Hot reload is a feature of Flutter that allows you to change code on the device during development. It requires building the Flutter engine with a debug-mode Dart VM which includes a just-in-time (JIT) Dart compiler.
Code push is a feature that allows you to change code on the device in production. We will use a variety of different techniques to make this possible depending on the platform. Current demos execute ahead-of-time compiled Dart code and do not require a JIT Dart compiler.
Code push isn't needed for Flutter web as the web already works this way. When a user opens a web app it downloads the latest version from the server if needed.
If you have a use case for code push with Fluter web, we'd love to know!
Yes.
So far we've been using Android for our demos, but code push will eventually work everywhere Flutter works. We're focusing on building out the infrastructure needed to provide code push reliably, safely first before targeting any specific platform.
There are different technical restrictions on some platforms (e.g. iOS) relative to Android, but we have several approaches we can use to solve them (Dart is an incredibly flexible language).
Developers are bound by their agreements with store providers when they choose to use those stores. Code push is designed to allow developers to update their apps and still comply with store policies on iOS and Android. Similar to the variety of commercial products available to do so with React Native (e.g. Microsoft, Expo).
We will include more instructions and guidelines about how to both use code push and comply with store guidelines as we get closer to a public launch.
Yes. One could imagine running a server to distribute the updates separately from the general internet, but some form of network connectivity is required to transport updates to the devices.
Our current designs for code push send the current app version & code signature as part of the update request. Thus the update server could be written to respond with either the next incremental version or the latest version depending on your application's needs. The current demo always sends the latest version but this logic would not be hard to add.
Parts of the code push ("updater") system are written in Rust:
- Avoids starting two Dart VMs (one for the updater and one for the app).
- Allows accessing the updater code from multiple languages (e.g. both the C++ engine as well as a Dart/Flutter application, or even Kotlin/Swift "native" code if needed)
See our Languages Philosophy for more information as to why we chose Rust.