Flutter Has a Package Problem

It’s true that abandoned projects in open source software (OSS) are common. NPM is infamous for the number of abandoned packages, which is mainly due to the lack of internal utility libraries, where for instance Python internal libraries shines. However, maintaining a Flutter package is more challenging since you need to account for at least two platforms for mobile (iOS/Android), and increasingly, web and desktop applications if you are brave enough.

Each platform has different requirements. Android frequently updates its SDK and how Gradle handles configurations, which has caused many open source packages to become incompatible, creating headaches for Flutter developers.

Flutter itself bears some responsibility. While it’s understandable for a newer framework, the number of debugging issues and deprecated features that arise with every update is discouraging, particularly for open source maintainers. The hours I spent manually updating my projects is staggering.

As the most recent example of this trend, four days ago, the Flutter core team announced the discontinuation of six popular packages. Among these, two were heavily used in my project: flutter_markdown and flutter_adaptive_scaffold.

But that’s not the only issue. Recently, the package I used for my main form editor is no longer maintained, the package for displaying badge icons on iOS is discontinued, and the utilities for image and file picking are incompatible and haven’t been updated in 15 months.

Most frustratingly, flutter_adaptive_scaffold was actually recommended by the Flutter team as the solution for creating adaptive designs. Now it’s being abandoned, leaving developers who followed their guidance in a difficult position.

Flutter’s Dependency on Third-Party Packages

Flutter is cross-platform and platform-agnostic, meaning developers shouldn’t need to write Java or Kotlin code. This is attractive since many of us use Flutter for this exact purpose: a single language for all major platforms. However, it comes at the cost of heavy reliance on third-party packages.

Nearly all advanced features such as notifications, advanced editors, camera and media functionality, and local storage rely heavily on third-party packages – packages that are, for some of them, slowly being deprecated.

As a Django developer (Django mentioned 🐍) I rely on third-party package and while a lot of them are fairly complicated to develop myself, I can understand most of the code and fix it myself, if one utility package is no longer updated I can create my own in a small amount of time, this is sadly not possible with Flutter since I would need to create specific code for IOS and Android.

What can we do ?

If one of the package you are using is not updated anymore you can, if the changes are minors, patch it yourself, let’s see how :

  • Fork the project
  • Upgrade to the latest major requirements with flutter upgrade && flutter pub upgrade --major-versions
  • Migrate to the latest Android SDK and XCode requirements, you can import the project in Android Studio and Xcode for easier patching
  • Remove the package from your pubspec.yaml and change it as follow
dependencies: your_package: git: url: https://github.com/your_username/your_package.git ref: main # branch

What’s Next for Flutter?

This is somewhat a rant article: I remain undecided about Flutter and its direction. The web platform is still far from being production-ready, too many packages are being deprecated, UI jank and various issues persist, and the lack of stability between updates is concerning.

I still appreciate Flutter for what it is: an accessible, near-native performance cross-platform framework. However, the developer experience has been challenging. Let’s see what 2025 brings for Flutter