Deep link validator fails to load & validate links

[CodingAleCR]

<-- Please describe your problem here. Be sure to include repro steps. -->

1. Create a file ".env" at the root path of your project

   {
       "APPLICATION_ID": "com.my.app.id"
   }
   

2. Edit your android/app/build.gradle file with this after the plugin section :

   def dartEnvironmentVariables = [];
   if (project.hasProperty("dart-defines")) {
       dartEnvironmentVariables = project.property("dart-defines")
           .split(',')
           .collectEntries { entry ->
               def pair = new String(entry.decodeBase64(), "UTF-8").split("=")
               [(pair.first()): pair.last()]
           }
   }
   

   Still on the build.gradle file, edit the application id defaultConfig like that :

       defaultConfig {
           applicationId dartEnvironmentVariables.APPLICATION_ID
           ...
       }
   

3. Verify that your application is working well using "--dart-define-from-file" on your run command. Here an example with a custom launch config for VSCode if you are using that IDE (.launch.json file)

   {
         "name": "Android - DEV",
         "request": "launch",
         "type": "dart",
         "program": "lib/main.dart",
         "toolArgs": [
             "--dart-define-from-file", ".env"
         ]
   }
   

Result: Unable to load deep link validator tool.

Reference screen shots:

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DevTools version: 2.40.2

[elliette]

FYI @chunhtai @hannah-hyj

[elliette]

I did some investigation into this. To get the app link settings for an Android app, the deep link tool calls:

flutter analyze --android --output-app-link-settings --build-variant={{buildVariant}} {{appPath}}

https://github.com/flutter/devtools/blob/79f0a20e6d42ae63027c932a33a49f431ba89450/packages/devtools_shared/lib/src/deeplink/deeplink_manager.dart#L139-L156

On the flutter_tool side:

I believe the the AndroidAnalyze command likely expects the application ID to be a string, and therefore needs to be updated to handle parsing an environment variable instead (https://github.com/flutter/flutter/blob/8fe76181e34852d78802b1f24e612bded2cecdfe/packages/flutter_tools/lib/src/commands/analyze.dart#L288) I've filed https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/179705 for that.

On the DevTools side:

We should at least show an error message to show what has gone wrong instead of an infinite spinner. @chunhtai @hannah-hyj - do either of you have the bandwidth to add better error handling here?

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FYI @CodingAleCR and any others who run into this - as a temporary workaround I believe you should be able to hardcode your applicationId in build.gradle when you need to validate deep links for your app and then reset it when you are done.