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