The pub tool

The pub tool has commands for managing packages and for deploying packages and command-line apps. For general information about using the pub package manager, see How to use packages.

Flutter note: If you’re using the Flutter SDK, don’t use the pub command directly. Instead use the flutter pub command, as described in Using packages on the Flutter website.

Quick links to the pub commands:

• pub cache
• pub deps
• pub downgrade
• pub get
• pub global
• pub outdated
• pub publish
• pub run
• pub upgrade
• pub uploader

Problems? See Troubleshooting Pub.

Pub’s commands fall into the following categories:

• Managing package dependencies
• Running command-line apps
• Deploying packages and apps

Managing package dependencies

Pub provides a number of commands for managing the packages your code depends on.

In this group, the most commonly used commands are pub get and pub upgrade, which retrieve or upgrade dependencies used by a package. Every time you modify a pubspec file, run pub get to make sure the dependencies are up to date. Some IDEs perform this step automatically on the creation of a project, or any modification of the pubspec.

pub cache

Manages pub’s local package cache. Use this command to add packages to your cache, or to perform a clean reinstall of all packages in your cache.

pub deps

Lists all dependencies used by the current package.

pub downgrade

Retrieves the lowest versions of all the packages that are listed as dependencies used by the current package. Used for testing the lower range of your package’s dependencies.

pub get

Retrieves the packages that are listed as the dependencies for the current package. If a pubspec.lock file already exists, fetches the version of each dependency (if possible) as listed in the lock file. Creates or updates the lock file, as needed.

pub outdated

Looks at every package that the current package depends on, determines which package dependencies are out of date, and gives you advice on how to update them. Use this command when you want to update package dependencies.

pub upgrade

Retrieves the latest version of each package listed as dependencies used by the current package. If a pubspec.lock file exists, ignores the versions listed in the lock file and fetches the newest versions that honor the constraints in the pubspec. Creates or updates the lock file, as needed.

Running command-line apps

Two commands let you run Dart scripts from the command line:

• The pub run command invokes a Dart script in your package, or in one of its dependencies.

• The pub global command lets you work with globally available packages.

Deploying packages and apps

With pub you can publish packages and command-line apps.

Note: Pub used to support building apps through commands like pub build and pub serve. That functionality is now in other tools such as the build system. For details, see Obsolete Pub Features.

Packages

To share your Dart packages with the world, you can use the pub publish command to upload the package to the pub.dev site. The pub uploader command enables specific users to modify and upload new versions of your package.

Command-line apps

For any package that contains scripts (anything under the bin/ directory), consider adding the executables tag to the pubspec file. When a script is listed under executables, users can run pub global activate to make it directly available from the command line.

Global options

Several command-line options work with all of the pub commands. These include:

--help or -h

Print usage information.

--version

Print version of pub.

--trace

Print debugging information when an error occurs.

--verbosity=<level>

The specified level determines the amount of information that is displayed:

• all

  Show all output, including internal tracing messages.

• io

  Show I/O operations.

• normal

  Show errors, warnings, and user messages.

• solver

  Show steps during version resolution.

-verbose or -v

Equivalent to --verbosity=all.