[flutter_tools] IDE plugin validators should be deprecated

[christopherfujino]

Supporting the filepaths to the android studio plugins is a moving target, that has proven difficult to keep up to date. In addition, the warning makes Flutter users think that the SDK will not function properly, when this is a completely informational warning; in other words, Flutter does not directly use the IDE plugins, so doctor failing to detect them does not affect any behavior (it's just annoying).

[eckhartcke]

As a Flutter developer, I would advocate against this change unless some other warning is provided when the plugins are failing. While I acknowledge the premise that it doesn't compromise the generation of an app, it DOES compromise my productivity in the extreme. So much so that I downgraded Android Studio so I can have the benefit of the plugins while this gets sorted out.

To the Flutter team: Rest assured that I emphatically endorse both Flutter and the people who work on it. Just please be mindful of the entire developer experience as you make decisions that affect the community. Please don't deprecate this validity check without giving visibility to the broken-ness of these plugins in some other way.

To be clear to anyone not close to the issue, the warning is/was correct; The plugins were not working. I'm not arguing so much against this specific change, as FOR the addition of some developer alert that a previously working functionality is broken. With appropriate observability, I can immediately move to making a decision about how it affects me rather than wasting a lot of time sleuthing out that something is not working.

Thanks for all you do. Flutter is epic.

[christopherfujino]

To be clear to anyone not close to the issue, the warning is/was correct; The plugins were not working. I'm not arguing so much against this specific change, as FOR the addition of some developer alert that a previously working functionality is broken. With appropriate observability, I can immediately move to making a decision about how it affects me rather than wasting a lot of time sleuthing out that something is not working.

I'm not familiar with the issue you are referring to, but it sounds like this is a new feature request. Note that the Flutter doctor plugin validators do NOT validate the plugin works, but only that they exist on disk. I'm not sure how we would validate that installed plugins are working.

[yashtibrewal]

Isn't there a way we can manually give the paths like we can configure the paths w.r.t android studio and android SDK? ( provided there is a way to get the path to those plugins...) will this not solve the issue for both arguments, for and against?

[christopherfujino]

Isn't there a way we can manually give the paths like we can configure the paths w.r.t android studio and android SDK? ( provided there is a way to get the path to those plugins...) will this not solve the issue for both arguments, for and against?

If you already know exactly where your plugin is, presumably you know that it is present, and thus you don't need the validator, right? We want to deprecate the plugin validators so that new users no longer get false negatives, where they have a working IDE setup but think they need to fix it.

[kf6gpe]

/cc @jonahwilliams Any thoughts here? It sounds it's working but generating warnings. It's been reported by front-line triage to be increasingly an issue for our users.

[yashtibrewal]

Isn't there a way we can manually give the paths like we can configure the paths w.r.t android studio and android SDK? ( provided there is a way to get the path to those plugins...) will this not solve the issue for both arguments, for and against?

If you already know exactly where your plugin is, presumably you know that it is present, and thus you don't need the validator, right? We want to deprecate the plugin validators so that new users no longer get false negatives, where they have a working IDE setup but think they need to fix it.

Hi,
Yes, I agree with your point,
I am new to Dart and Flutter myself, but image this.
They remove the validator
I am not aware of it
and I go down a path less traveled?
I got to know about those plugins only after reading in detail why we are getting those errors/warnings.
Yes, they are annoying, but they do nudge the new users to have the plugins.
An alternative would be to have a separate icon instead of a red wrong cross, something which tells it's optional but preferrable.
I partially support your point to remove ( I would suggest, move them to warning or suggestion topic under the logs generated by flutter doctor.