Flutter build release channels

Flutter has the following channels, in increasing order of stability:

• master: The current tip-of-tree, absolute latest cutting edge build. Usually functional, though sometimes we accidentally break things.

• dev (previously known as alpha): The latest fully-tested build. Usually functional, but see Bad Builds for a list of known "bad" dev builds.

• beta: Every few weeks, we pick the "best" dev build of the previous month or so, and promote it to beta. These builds have been tested with our codelabs.

Eventually we will also have a release build, which will be the best beta build of the previous year or so, but we haven't yet reached a quality level that we are sufficiently happy with to use this label yet.

How to change channels

You can see which channel you're on with the following command:

$ flutter channel
Flutter channels:
* beta
  dev
  master

To switch channels, run flutter channel [<channel-name>], and then run flutter upgrade to ensure you're on the latest.

Issues and Workarounds

Issue: When switching channels, you see an error message Unable to upgrade Flutter: no upstream repository configured.

Workaround: You could get into this state if you ran flutter channel beta before the beta channel was officially released, due to a bug that has now been fixed. To resolve, run the following command from the root directory where Flutter is installed:

$ git fetch origin; git branch -u origin/beta beta; flutter channel beta 

After running this command, you should be back on the beta branch and be able to run flutter upgrade to complete the upgrade process.

See also:

• Release process, which describes the details for how we push builds from channel to channel.
• Changelog, where we describe changes since the last beta release.