Added #

• Initial release of flutter-w CLI tool
• Automatic hot reload on Dart file changes
• Automatic hot restart on configuration file changes
• Support for custom watch paths with -w and -W flags
• Device selection support with -d flag
• Configurable debounce timing with -b flag
• Pass-through arguments to Flutter run using -- separator
• Verbose logging mode with -v flag
• Signal handling for graceful shutdown (SIGINT/Ctrl+C)
• Support for file, directory, and simple glob pattern watching
• Environment variable support for custom Flutter executable path (FLUTTER_BIN)
• Dry-run mode with --no-run flag to preview commands

Technical Details #

• Built with Dart using watcher package for file system monitoring
• Process management with stdin/stdout piping to Flutter process
• Debouncing mechanism to prevent excessive reloads
• Support for both file and directory watchers with recursive monitoring

Background #

This tool was created to solve the problem of Flutter hot reload not working automatically in terminal environments or text editors without Flutter IDE plugins. It emerged from troubleshooting CocoaPods installation issues on macOS, where using Homebrew-installed CocoaPods proved more reliable than gem-based installation with system Ruby.