Launching a Very Good App from VS Code

Want to launch your Very Good app directly from VS Code? It's easy by creating a new profile.

If you create an app using the Very Good CLI, then you may have noticed that you can't launch it in an android emulator by default. With a couple quick changes we can get it running.

First, we need to create a launch.json file for our project inside the .vscode folder, then add a profile to it.

The file should look something like this with our new profile "App (Flutter)" in it:

launch.json
{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "App (Flutter)",
            "program": "lib/main_development.dart",
            "args": [
                "--flavor",
                "development",
                "--no-sound-null-safety" // this is only required if you need to include files without proper null safety support
            ],
            "cwd": "app",
            "request": "launch",
            "type": "dart"
        }
    ]
}

A couple comments on specific lines:

  • "name" - this can be whatever you want to describe this profile
  • "program" - this is the main file that will be launched. The other options for a very good app are lib_staging.dart and lib_production.dart.
  • "args" - these are the command line args that our launch command requires

If you want to run the staging build, then use the lib_staging.dart file as your "program" and update the --flavor to "staging". The same steps for the production build.

Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong

I'm Brian Armstrong, a SaaS developer with 15+ years programming experience. I am a Flutter evangelist and React.js enthusiast.