Initialize Patchwing

Note

If you are starting a new project, you can use patchwing create to generate a new Flutter app with Patchwing.

To configure an existing Flutter project to use Patchwing, use patchwing init at the root of a Flutter project:

patchwing init

This does three things:

1. Tells Patchwing to create a unique app_id for your app. This app_id is how Patchwing identifies your app and knows which updates to send to it. It does not need to be kept secret.
2. Creates a patchwing.yaml file in your project’s root directory. patchwing.yaml contains the app_id mentioned above.
3. Adds the patchwing.yaml to the assets section of your pubspec.yaml file, ensuring patchwing.yaml is bundled with your app’s assets and is available to the Patchwing updater at runtime.

You can safely commit these changes, they will have no affect on your app when not using Patchwing.

Example output for an app named patchwing_test:

$ patchwing init
✓ Detecting product flavors (0.6s)
? How should we refer to this app? (patchwing_test) patchwing_test
✓ Patchwing is up-to-date (0.6s)
✓ Flutter install is correct (4.5s)
✓ AndroidManifest.xml files contain INTERNET permission (23ms)

No issues detected!

🐦 Patchwing initialized successfully!

✅ A patchwing app has been created.
✅ A "patchwing.yaml" has been created.
✅ The "pubspec.yaml" has been updated to include "patchwing.yaml" as an asset.

Reference the following commands to get started:

📦 To create a new release use: "patchwing release".
🚀 To push an update use: "patchwing patch".
👀 To preview a release use: "patchwing preview".

For more information about Patchwing, visit https://patchwing.net

Note

You can supply a display name directly via the command line by passing the --display-name flag:

patchwing init --display-name "My App"

The generated patchwing.yaml should look similar to:

# This file is used to configure the Patchwing updater used by your application.
# Learn more at https://patchwing.net
# This file should be checked into version control.

# This is the unique identifier assigned to your app.
# It is used by your app to request the correct patches from Patchwing servers.
app_id: 8c846e87-1461-4b09-8708-170d78331aca

If your application contains flavors, patchwing init will create an app per flavor and patchwing.yaml will include all flavors and their corresponding app_ids:

# This file is used to configure the Patchwing updater used by your application.
# Learn more at https://patchwing.net
# This file should be checked into version control.

# This is the unique identifier assigned to your app.
# It is used by your app to request the correct patches from Patchwing servers.
app_id: 864ab1b0-ba78-4b15-990a-a63cec35a41b
flavors:
  development: 864ab1b0-ba78-4b15-990a-a63cec35a41b
  production: 6b6e6631-4fbe-4645-8d9d-d5247656d975

Note

The app_id is a required field in every patchwing.yaml. In the case of flavors, app_id will default to the first flavor and will be overwritten at build time to the corresponding flavor’s app_id.

Note

Patchwing code push requires the internet permission to be added to your AndroidManifest.xml file (located in android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml). This is required for the app to be able to communicate with the Patchwing servers to download patches.

patchwing init will add this permission if it is not already present.

<manifest ...>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
...
</manifest>

Tip

If you already have a patchwing.yaml and would like to re-initialize your project, use patchwing init --force. This will overwrite your existing patchwing.yaml and create a new app/app_id. Existing apps will not be affected by re-initializing patchwing.

What’s Next

Create a Release Build and submit your app to Patchwing.

Preview Locally Test your release on a local device before publishing.