text
stringlengths
1
372
FlutterEngines but does remove the ability to spawn additional
FlutterEngines that share resources with existing spawned engines.
<topic_end>
<topic_start>
communication
communication between flutter instances is handled using platform channels
(or pigeon) through the host platform. to see our roadmap on communication,
or other planned work on enhancing multiple flutter instances, check out
issue 72009.
<topic_end>
<topic_start>
samples
you can find a sample demonstrating how to use FlutterEngineGroup
on both android and iOS on GitHub.
<topic_end>
<topic_start>
load sequence, performance, and memory
this page describes the breakdown of the steps involved
to show a flutter UI. knowing this, you can make better,
more informed decisions about when to pre-warm the flutter engine,
which operations are possible at which stage,
and the latency and memory costs of those operations.
<topic_end>
<topic_start>
loading flutter
android and iOS apps (the two supported platforms for
integrating into existing apps), full flutter apps,
and add-to-app patterns have a similar sequence of
conceptual loading steps when displaying the flutter UI.
<topic_end>
<topic_start>
finding the flutter resources
flutter’s engine runtime and your application’s compiled
dart code are both bundled as shared libraries on android
and iOS. the first step of loading flutter is to find those
resources in your .apk/.ipa/.app (along with other flutter
assets such as images, fonts, and JIT code, if applicable).
this happens when you construct a FlutterEngine for the
first time on both android
and iOS APIs.
<topic_end>
<topic_start>
loading the flutter library
after it’s found, the engine’s shared libraries are memory loaded
once per process.
on android, this also happens when the
FlutterEngine is constructed because the
JNI connectors need to reference the flutter c++ library.
on iOS, this happens when the
FlutterEngine is first run,
such as by running runWithEntrypoint:.
<topic_end>
<topic_start>
starting the dart VM
the dart runtime is responsible for managing dart memory and
concurrency for your dart code. in JIT mode,
it’s additionally responsible for compiling
the dart source code into machine code during runtime.
a single dart runtime exists per application session on
android and iOS.
a one-time dart VM start is done when constructing the
FlutterEngine for the first time on
android and when running a dart entrypoint
for the first time on iOS.
at this point, your dart code’s snapshot
is also loaded into memory from your application’s files.
this is a generic process that also occurs if you used the
dart SDK directly, without the flutter engine.
the dart VM never shuts down after it’s started.
<topic_end>
<topic_start>
creating and running a dart isolate
after the dart runtime is initialized,
the flutter engine’s usage of the dart
runtime is the next step.
this is done by starting a dart isolate in the dart runtime.
the isolate is dart’s container for memory and threads.
a number of auxiliary threads on the host platform are
also created at this point to support the isolate, such
as a thread for offloading GPU handling and another for image decoding.
one isolate exists per FlutterEngine instance, and multiple isolates
can be hosted by the same dart VM.
on android, this happens when you call
DartExecutor.executeDartEntrypoint()
on a FlutterEngine instance.
on iOS, this happens when you call runWithEntrypoint:
on a FlutterEngine.
at this point, your dart code’s selected entrypoint
(the main() function of your dart library’s main.dart file,
by default) is executed. if you called the
flutter function runApp() in your main() function,
then your flutter app or your library’s widget tree is also created
and built. if you need to prevent certain functionalities from executing
in your flutter code, then the AppLifecycleState.detached
enum value indicates that the FlutterEngine isn’t attached
to any UI components such as a FlutterViewController
on iOS or a FlutterActivity on android.
<topic_end>
<topic_start>
attaching a UI to the flutter engine