The Flutter CLI

In React, your day-to-day workflow runs through npm scripts defined in package.json — npm run dev, npm run build, npm run test. Flutter replaces all of these with the flutter CLI and a matching set of first-party subcommands. There is no separate config file for scripts: the commands are built into the SDK and work identically on every machine.

Core commands

The table below is your cheat-sheet. Every npm script you reach for has a direct Flutter equivalent, and in several cases Flutter collapses multiple npm commands into one.

npm / Vite	Flutter CLI	Notes
`npm run dev` / `vite`	`flutter run`	Starts the app on device or emulator, enables hot reload
`npm run build`	`flutter build apk` / `flutter build ipa` / `flutter build web`	Target-specific production builds
`npm test`	`flutter test`	Runs all files matching `test/*/_test.dart`
`npx eslint .`	`flutter analyze`	Static analysis — lint errors
`npx tsc --noEmit`	`flutter analyze`	Same command catches type errors too
(no equivalent)	`flutter doctor`	Diagnoses the local Flutter/toolchain setup
(no equivalent)	`flutter clean`	Deletes `build/` and `.dart_tool/` — like `rm -rf node_modules/.cache`
(no equivalent)	`flutter pub upgrade`	Upgrades all dependencies to the latest compatible versions

Notice that flutter analyze replaces both ESLint and tsc. Dart is a statically typed language, so the same analysis pass handles type errors and lint rules together.

// React — npm scripts in package.json
{
  "scripts": {
    "dev":       "vite",
    "build":     "vite build",
    "preview":   "vite preview",
    "test":      "jest --watch",
    "lint":      "eslint src --ext .ts,.tsx",
    "typecheck": "tsc --noEmit"
  }
}

# Flutter CLI equivalents

# Start on connected device (hot reload enabled)
flutter run

# Production builds
flutter build apk        # Android APK
flutter build ipa        # iOS archive
flutter build web        # Web output

# Run all tests
flutter test

# Static analysis (lint + type check combined)
flutter analyze

# Diagnose toolchain setup
flutter doctor

# Clean build artifacts
flutter clean

# Upgrade dependencies
flutter pub upgrade

Hot reload vs Fast Refresh

React’s Fast Refresh and Flutter’s hot reload solve the same problem: you edit a file, save it, and the running app reflects the change in under a second — without losing component/widget state.

Flutter hot reload (r in the terminal, or the reload button in VS Code / Android Studio) injects updated Dart code into the running VM. State is preserved. Most widget changes — layout, text, colors, logic — reflect immediately in 100–300 ms.

Flutter hot restart (R) is the closer match to a full browser page reload. The app restarts from main() and all state is cleared. You need a hot restart when you:

Change initState or a StatefulWidget constructor
Modify global or static state
Add a new StatefulWidget where there was none before

React Fast Refresh maps to Flutter hot reload (state preserved). A full browser reload — Ctrl+R or restarting vite — maps to Flutter hot restart (state cleared).

One key difference: Flutter hot reload works on physical devices over USB, not just emulators. There is no browser required.

flutter doctor

flutter doctor checks the entire local toolchain and reports what is working and what is broken. It covers:

Flutter SDK version and channel
Android toolchain (SDK, adb, licenses)
Xcode and iOS tools (macOS only)
Chrome (for web targets)
VS Code and Android Studio plugin status
Connected devices

Think of it as running node -v && npm -v && tsc -v && xcode-select -p && adb version all at once, with a clear pass/fail summary for each component.

# Standard check
flutter doctor

# Verbose output — shows exact paths and version numbers
flutter doctor -v

Example output:

Doctor summary (to see all details, run flutter doctor -v):
[✓] Flutter (Channel stable, 3.22.0)
[✓] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices (Android SDK version 34.0.0)
[✗] Xcode - develop for iOS and macOS
    ✗ Xcode installation is incomplete; a full installation is necessary for iOS
      and Mac development.
[✓] Chrome - develop for the web
[✓] VS Code (version 1.89.0)
[✓] Connected device (2 available)

Any ✗ item includes the exact command to fix it. Run flutter doctor after every SDK update or when something stops working — it is almost always the fastest path to the root cause.