# nerves_flutter_support
> ⚠️ NOTE: This is a fairly new project. Functionally everything is working on _tested_ Nerves systems.
## What Is This?
NervesFlutterSupport is the base library for running Flutter based UI applications on Nerves devices.
## Overview
NervesFlutterSupport contains the following components:
* Pre-compiled and patched runtime libraries for various dependencies. (See `builder/` for more info.)
* Including a pre-compiled version of Sony's open source [Flutter Embedder](https://github.com/sony/flutter-embedded-linux).
* A [Mix Release Step](https://hexdocs.pm/mix/1.18.2/Mix.Tasks.Release.html#module-steps) that can be included in your existing Mix project.
* Takes care of downloading the Flutter [embedder](https://github.com/sony/flutter-embedded-linux) and runtime libraries.
* Will automatically compile your Flutter project using the `gen_snapshot` tool and output an AOT build.
* `NervesFlutterSupport.Flutter.Engine` - A module to create a [Muontrap](https://hexdocs.pm/muontrap/readme.html) child_spec for running the embedder.
* `NervesFlutterSupport.Udev` - (Automatically started for you) A module that ensure `eudevd` is running for input devices to function properly.
## Tested Platforms
NervesFlutterSupport has been tested on the following platforms:
* Raspberry Pi 4
* Raspberry Pi 5
However it should be noted that any aarch64 based Nerves System _should be compatible_ with this library.
Please file any issues if you run into any problems with your ARM64 platform. We also welcome Buildroot config contributions for other platforms.
## Getting Started
**Currently we only support Linux and macOS hosts when building firmware. Windows users should use WSL.**
**If you are a macOS user, please ensure you have `docker` installed!**
1. Install [Flutter](https://docs.flutter.dev/get-started/install). See the top of this readme file for which version to use. (Flutter versions may change with Hex package versions!)
2. Create a new Flutter app in your Mix project using: `flutter create flutter_app`.
3. Add this package to your `deps` in `mix.exs`.
4. Add the release step to your existing firmware's `steps:` member:
```elixir
steps: [
&Nerves.Release.init/1,
&NervesFlutterSupport.BuildFlutterApp.run/1, # Add Me!
:assemble
],
```
5. Run `mix firmware` as you normally would, if all is well, you should see you Flutter app build and emit a bundle into your `priv/` directory.
6. To run the Flutter app you can add the following to your `Application` or `Supervisor` children:
```elixir
# With no options, your Flutter app bundle is expreted to be in `priv/flutter_app`
NervesFlutterSupport.Flutter.Engine.create_child(
app_name: :my_flutter_app,
)
```
## Example Project
Example Project: [NervesFlutterExample](https://github.com/nerves-flutter/nerves_flutter_example)
`NervesFlutterExample` is a basic Flutter + Nerves firmware for `:rpi4` and `:rpi5` targets. It uses
gRPC and Protobufs to communicate between the Nerves firmware code and the Dart Flutter application.
