MVP - The Multi View Playground

This repository contains samples to experiment with rendering into multiple views from Flutter. Some samples are aspirational and may not actually work. Some samples may require a custom engine build to run. Some samples may be outdated and/or have other issues. DO NOT DEPEND ON ANYTHING IN THIS REPOSITORY.

This playground does not demonstrate a windowing API and creating/managing windows from a Flutter app is not yet supported. However, the rendering APIs demonstrated in this playground will form the foundation for future multi-window support in Flutter. Nothing in this repository shall be seen as a definite or "official" decision on windowing APIs, though. This is just an exploratory playground.

Please report any bugs you may encounter.

Supported platforms

The demos in this repository run on the following platforms:

Platform	Support
macOS	⚠️ with custom engine branch (see instructions below)
Windows	⚠️ with custom engine branch (see instructions below)
Linux	❌

How to use?

The samples are meant to be used with a custom (prototype) engine using the master branch of the framework.

Set up the Framework development environment: See the wiki page.
In the framework repo, switch to the master branch:

git checkout master

Set up the Engine development environment: See the wiki page.
In the engine repo, add the prototype remote and switch to the prototype branch:

git remote add loic-sharma https://github.com/loic-sharma/flutter-engine/
git fetch loic-sharma
git checkout 2d9c4f5735423ed2558ce22f7fca62d047956ba4

In this repo, edit pubspec.yaml, and add the following dependency override to use the custom dart:ui library:

dependency_overrides:
  sky_engine:
    path: /path/to/flutter/engine/out/host_debug_unopt/gen/dart-pkg/sky_engine

Build the custom engine: See the wiki page.
In this repo, update packages.

flutter pub get

Run a sample file (see below for options) with the custom engine. For example,

flutter run --local-engine=host_debug_unopt -d macos -t lib/raw_dynamic.dart

If everything goes well, the app should start up with a number of windows.

Samples

raw_static.dart

Renders some view-specific information into each FlutterView available in PlatformDispatcher.views using only APIs exposed by dart:ui. A new frame is only scheduled if the metrics of a FlutterView change or if a view is added/removed.

raw_dynamic.dart

Renders a spinning rectangular into each FlutterView available in PlatformDispatcher.views using only APIs exposed by dart:ui. Frames are continuously scheduled to keep the animation running.

widgets_static.dart

Renders some view-specific information into each FlutterView available in PlatformDispatcher.views using the Flutter widget framework (package:flutter/widgets.dart). A new frame is only scheduled if the metrics of a FlutterView change or if a view is added/removed.

widgets_dynamic.dart

Renders a spinning rectangular into each FlutterView available in PlatformDispatcher.views using the Flutter widget framework (package:flutter/widgets.dart). Frames are continuously scheduled to keep the animation running.

widgets_counter.dart

Renders the Counter app (an interactive Material Design app) into each FlutterView available in PlatformDispatcher.views.

goderbauer / mvp