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In the pubspec.yaml file of my Flutter project there is a caret (^) before the version number of some of the dependencies.
dependencies: flutter: sdk: flutter cupertino_icons: ^0.1.2 english_words: ^3.1.5 What is its purpose? What does it mean?
Notes
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You can go to the pubspec. yaml file and add dependencies ,under dependencies and then packages get will do the work. or you can run flutter pub get in the terminal.
yaml file, often referred to as the pubspec. A basic pubspec is generated when you create a new Flutter project. It's located at the top of the project tree and contains metadata about the project that the Dart and Flutter tooling needs to know.
There are two types of dependencies, one is regular and the other is dev. dependencies: Regular dependencies are listed under dependencies:—these are packages that anyone using your package will also need.
A dependency is another package that your package needs in order to work. Dependencies are specified in your pubspec. You list only immediate dependencies—the software that your package uses directly. Pub handles transitive dependencies for you.
The caret sign (^) is used for pub dependencies in Dart to indicate a range of version numbers are allowed. Specifically, any version from the specified version up to (but not including) the next non-breaking version is ok.
^3.1.5 is the same as '>=3.1.5 <4.0.0' ^1.2.3 would be the same as '>=1.2.3 <2.0.0' It's shorthand for the longer form.
The ^ is saying, I want to automatically use the most up-to-date package from Pub as long as that update won't break anything in my app.
Originally I had thought that
^0.1.2 is the same as '>=0.1.2 <1.0.0' (wrong!) However, that is an incorrect understanding of Semantic Versioning. When the major version number is 0 (as in the 0 of 0.1.2), the meaning is that the API is unstable and even minor version number changes (as in the 1 of 0.1.2) can indicate a breaking change.
The Semantic Versioning article states:
Major version zero (0.y.z) is for initial development. Anything may change at any time. The public API should not be considered stable.
and also
How should I deal with revisions in the 0.y.z initial development phase?
The simplest thing to do is start your initial development release at 0.1.0 and then increment the minor version for each subsequent release.
Thus, the following is the corrected form:
^0.1.2 is the same as '>=0.1.2 <0.2.0' Thank you to Günter Zöchbauer for pointing out my error.
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