Mobile Nebula

August 3, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

Play Store | App Store

Setting up dev environment

Install all of the following things:

Ensure your path is set up correctly to execute flutter

Run flutter doctor and fix everything it complains before proceeding

NOTE on iOS, always open Runner.xcworkspace and NOT the Runner.xccodeproj

Before first compile

  • Copy env.sh.example and set it up for your machine
  • Ensure you have run gomobile init
  • In Android Studio, make sure you have the current ndk installed by going to Tools -> SDK Manager, go to the SDK Tools tab, check the Show package details box, expand the NDK section and select 28.2.13676358 version.
  • Ensure you have downloaded an ndk via android studio, this is likely not the default one and you need to check the Show package details box to select the correct version. The correct version comes from the error when you try and compile
  • Make sure you have gem installed with sudo gem install
  • If on MacOS arm, sudo gem install ffi -- --enable-libffi-alloc

If the iOS build complains that MobileNebula.xcframework is stale or missing, run ./ensure-mobile-nebula.sh from the repo root. It rebuilds the gomobile framework only when the Go code in nebula/ changes, Xcode runs it automatically as a pre-build action on the Runner scheme.

Building from Xcode after a flutter command

flutter pub get, flutter test and friends rewrite the generated plugin package with flutter's own iOS 13 minimum, which SPM then rejects because file_picker needs 14:

error: The package product 'file-picker' requires minimum platform version 14.0 for the iOS platform,
but this target supports 13.0

Only a flutter CLI build puts it back, so run this before building in Xcode:

flutter build ios --config-only

ensure-mobile-nebula.sh also does it, but Xcode resolves packages before pre-actions run, so it only helps the next build. Skip the command and the first build fails, the second works.

Formatting

dart format can be used to format the code in lib and test. We use a line-length of 120 characters.

Use:

dart format lib/ test/ -l 120

In Android Studio, set the line length using Preferences -> Editor -> Code Style -> Dart -> Line length, set it to 120. Enable auto-format with Preferences -> Languages & Frameworks -> Flutter -> Format code on save.

./swift-format.sh can be used to format Swift code in the repo.

Once swift-format supports ignoring directories (https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-format/issues/870), we can move to a method of running it more like what https://calebhearth.com/swift-format-github-action describes.