open-source UI software development kit for cross-platform applications
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Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit created by Google. It can be used to develop cross platform applications from a single codebase for the web, Fuchsia, Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. First described in 2015, Flutter was released in May 2017. Flutter is used internally by Google in apps such as Google Pay and Google Earth as well as by other software developers including ByteDance and Alibaba.
Flutter ships applications with its own rendering engine which directly outputs pixel data to the screen. This is in contrast to many other UI frameworks that rely on the target platform to provide a rendering engine, such as native Android apps which rely on the device-level Android SDK or iOS SDK which use the target platform's built-in UI stack. Flutter's control of its rendering pipeline simplifies multi-platform support as identical UI code can be used for all target platforms.One of Flutter’s key features is hot reload, which allows developers to see code changes instantly without restarting the application.
Flutter is Google's SDK for crafting beautiful, fast user experiences for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. Flutter works with existing code, is used by developers and organizations around the world, and is free and open source. For release and other announcements, join the flutter-announce mailing list. Our documentation also tracks breaking changes across releases. For example, when installed from GitHub (as opposed to from a prepackaged archive), the Flutter tool will download the Dart SDK from Google servers immediately when first run, as it is used to execute the flutter tool itself. This will also occur when Flutter is upgraded (e.g. by running the flutter upgrade command). We think Flutter will help you create beautiful, fast apps, with a productive, extensible and open development model, whether you're targeting iOS or Android, web, Windows, macOS, Linux or embedding it as the UI toolkit for a platform of your choice. We want to enable designers to deliver their full creative vision without being forced to water it down due to limitations of the underlying framework. Flutter's [layered architecture] gives you control over every pixel on the screen and its powerful compositing capabilities let you overlay and animate graphics, video, text, and controls without limitation. Flutter includes a full [set of widgets][widget catalog] that deliver pixel-perfect experiences whether you're building for iOS ([Cupertino]) or other platforms ([Material]), along with support for customizing or creating entirely new visual components. Flutter is fast. It's powered by hardware-accelerated 2D graphics libraries like [Skia] (which underpins Chrome and Android) and [Impeller]. We architected Flutter to support glitch-free, jank-free graphics at the native speed of your device. Flutter code is powered by the world-class [Dart programming language], which enables compilation to 32-bit and 64-bit ARM machine code for iOS and Android, JavaScript and WebAssembly for the web, as well as Intel x64 and ARM for desktop devices. Flutter offers [stateful hot reload][Hot reload], allowing you to make changes to your code and see the results instantly without restarting your app or losing its state. Flutter works with any development tool (or none at all), and also includes editor plug-ins for both [Visual Studio Code] and [IntelliJ / Android Studio]. Flutter provides [tens of thousands of packages][Flutter packages] to speed your development, regardless of your target platform. And accessing other native code is easy, with support for both FFI ([on Android][Android FFI], [on iOS][iOS FFI], [on macOS][macOS FFI], and [on Windows][Windows FFI]) as well as [platform-specific APIs][platform channels]. [flutter.dev]: [Discord instructions]: ./docs/contributing/Chat.md [Discord badge]: [Twitter handle]: [Twitter badge]: [BlueSky badge]: [BlueSky handle]: [layered architecture]: [architectural overview]: [widget catalog]: [Cupertino]: [Material]: [Skia]: [Dart programming language]: [Hot reload animation]: [Hot reload]: [Visual Studio Code]: [IntelliJ / Android Studio]: [Flutter packages]: [Android FFI]: [iOS FFI]: [macOS FFI]: [Windows FFI]: [platform channels]: [interop example]: [Impeller]:
Excerpt from the source-code README · 6,965 chars · not written by Vinony
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Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).