How to remove or identify unused packages from flutter to reduce size of the project?
I used some packages that I no longer need in my flutter project, namely the wilddog_auth and wilddog_sync, I can remove the imports from pubspec.yaml file, and my dart files (aka removing import 'package:wilddog_sync/wilddog_sync.dart' etc.) and remove imports in MainActivity.java as well as in Xcode project but I can't purge the unused files installed by flutter, cocoapod and gradle. Now is there a unified command in flutter where I can remove all unused packages at once?
I am pretty sure using flutter clean only removes build folder and using flutter packages get after removing packages from pubspec.yaml doesn't remove packages from cocoapod or gradle either.
For example, after flutter clean and flutter packages get I rebuilt the project:
Launching lib/main.dart on Android SDK built for x86 64 in debug mode...
Initializing gradle...
Resolving dependencies...
Running 'gradlew assembleDebug'...
Built build/app/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk.
Installing build/app/outputs/apk/app.apk...
I/FlutterActivityDelegate(11331): onResume setting current activity to this
I/Choreographer(11331): Skipped 107 frames! The application may be doing too much work on its main thread.
D/EGL_emulation(11331): eglMakeCurrent: 0x79f21b4dbec0: ver 2 0 (tinfo 0x79f219b4f160)
I/OpenGLRenderer(11331): Davey! duration=1903ms; Flags=1, IntendedVsync=7544454683637, Vsync=7546238016899, OldestInputEvent=9223372036854775807, NewestInputEvent=0, HandleInputStart=7546253803603, AnimationStart=7546253996603, PerformTraversalsStart=7546254171603, DrawStart=7546279222603, SyncQueued=7546288526603, SyncStart=7546295569603, IssueDrawCommandsStart=7546296644603, SwapBuffers=7546334455603, FrameCompleted=7546365204603, DequeueBufferDuration=2892000, QueueBufferDuration=199000,
Syncing files to device Android SDK built for x86 64...
D/ (11331): HostConnection::get() New Host Connection established 0x79f219ab81e0, tid 11383
D/EGL_emulation(11331): eglMakeCurrent: 0x79f21b5e26e0: ver 2 0 (tinfo 0x79f219aa66c0)
W/IInputConnectionWrapper(11331): getCursorCapsMode on inactive InputConnection
Yet all the package files remained.
Of course I could go into ./ios/ to run pods install to remove pods:
pod install
Analyzing dependencies
Fetching podspec for `Flutter` from `.symlinks/flutter/ios`
Removing Wilddog
Removing WilddogCore
Removing WilddogSync
Downloading dependencies
Using Flutter (1.0.0)
Generating Pods project
Integrating client project
Pod installation complete! There is 1 dependency from the Podfile and 1 total pod installed.
[!] Automatically assigning platform `ios` with version `8.0` on target `Runner` because no platform was specified. Please specify a platform for this target in your Podfile. See `https://guides.cocoapods.org/syntax/podfile.html#platform`.
Answer
Sometimes there might be packages that is not used in the project but you have installed sometime during the development stage. To find out those, First go to each dart file and remove the unused imports, then go to pubspec.yaml and comment the packages one by one and save the project. And then refresh the application(NOT HOT RELOAD). if the package us used in the project then it will throw you an error. After repeating the steps on all the packages you will be able to remove all the unwanted packages from your pubspec.
Now, delete the pubspec.lock file, and run the pub get again. Your project will now be having only the required packages and this could be the minimum size achievable.
