Dependency Management

When to use

• •Adding a package for a new feature.
• •Replacing an existing package.
• •Adding/removing dev tooling dependencies.
• •Investigating whether a package should be removed.

Steps

1) Validate necessity first

• •Confirm the problem cannot be solved with current project dependencies or Dart/Flutter SDK APIs.
• •If a package is still needed, define the exact capability gap it fills.

2) Evaluate candidate quality

Check package fitness before adding:

• •maintenance signal (recent stable releases, issue activity)
• •documentation quality and usage examples
• •compatibility with current architecture and target platforms
• •risk of overlap with existing stack (state management, DI, logging, serialization)

3) Add dependency with correct scope

Use the standard commands:

flutter pub add <package>
flutter pub add dev:<package>
flutter pub add override:<package>:<version>
dart pub remove <package>

Only use overrides when strictly required and time-bound.

4) Verify the integration

• •run dart analyze
• •run targeted flutter test for changed areas
• •remove imports/usages of replaced packages to avoid dead dependencies

5) Document the decision briefly

When introducing a new package, state:

• •why current stack was insufficient
• •why this package was selected over alternatives
• •rollback/removal condition if the package is temporary