hedgehog lab Flutter Analysis

The standard Dart and Flutter analyser configuration used at hedgehog lab. A project adopts it with one include: line, and gets the same lint rules, strict language modes and generated-code excludes as every other hedgehog lab project.

This package is a maintained fork of netsells/flutter-analysis, which was itself inspired by very_good_analysis. See Attribution.

Adopting it

Add the package as a git dependency, pinned to a tag, in pubspec.yaml:

dev_dependencies:
  hedgehoglab_flutter_analysis:
    git:
      url: https://github.com/hedgehoglab-engineering/flutter-analysis.git
      ref: 6.0.0

Then include the versioned file in analysis_options.yaml:

include: package:hedgehoglab_flutter_analysis/analysis_options.6.0.0.yaml

Run flutter pub get, then flutter analyze. Expect new findings on the first run: 6.0.0 turns on strict-casts, strict-inference and strict-raw-types.

Requires Dart 3.13 or later. The package is not published to pub.dev.

What 6.0.0 contains

• The rule set from 5.0.0, minus rules that no longer exist or are deprecated in Dart 3, plus flutter_style_todos. See the CHANGELOG for the exact list.
• strict-casts, strict-inference and strict-raw-types.
• Excludes for generated code (*.g.dart, *.freezed.dart, *.gr.dart, *.mocks.dart) and the platform directories.
• Severity overrides inherited from Netsells (missing_return and missing_required_param as errors, close_sinks and invalid_annotation_target ignored).
• lines_longer_than_80_chars stays on. It matches the default dart format page width, and it catches what the formatter cannot wrap (long strings and comments). A project that sets a different page_width should override the rule in its own analysis_options.yaml.

Versioning policy

Each release that changes rules adds a new versioned file, lib/analysis_options.X.Y.Z.yaml. Earlier files are never edited, so a project that includes analysis_options.6.0.0.yaml gets the same rules for as long as it pins that file.

• Projects pin both the git ref and the versioned file in the include: line. Upgrading is a deliberate change to both, reviewed like any other dependency bump.
• lib/analysis_options.yaml always points at the latest version. Including it means rules can change under you on the next pub upgrade, so avoid it in projects with a clean-analyser CI gate.
• New or tightened rules (and anything that makes a clean project fail) get a new major or minor version. Removing a rule the SDK no longer supports is also a new version, because the old file stops being accurate on newer SDKs.

Migrating

From netsells_flutter_analysis

1. Replace the dependency with the git dependency above.
2. Change the include to package:hedgehoglab_flutter_analysis/analysis_options.6.0.0.yaml.
3. Fix new findings from the strict language modes. If a project cannot absorb them at once, include analysis_options.5.0.0.yaml first (the Netsells rules, unchanged) and move to 6.0.0 in a separate change.

From an inline copy of the rules

1. Add the dependency and replace the copied linter: block with the include line.
2. Keep only project-specific analyzer: entries (extra excludes or severity changes) and linter.rules overrides. Anything that duplicates 6.0.0 can go.
3. Run flutter analyze and compare with the previous result. The usual differences are the strict modes and the generated-code excludes.

Suppressing lints

Some rules are undesirable in particular places. Suppress at the line, file or project level.

A line:

// ignore: public_member_api_docs
class A {}

A file:

// ignore_for_file: public_member_api_docs

A project: override the rule in the project's analysis_options.yaml after the include: line.

linter:
  rules:
    lines_longer_than_80_chars: false

Developing this package

CI formats and analyses the package and the example project with --fatal-infos, and fails on any undefined, removed or deprecated lint. Before adding a rule, check its status on dart.dev. Run the same checks locally:

dart format --output=none --set-exit-if-changed .
dart analyze --fatal-infos .
dart analyze --fatal-infos example

Attribution

Created by Netsells and released under the MIT licence. The original copyright notice is retained in LICENSE, with hedgehog lab's alongside it.