FAQ

Why using StatelessWidget instead of StatefulWidget?

The usage of StatelessWidget is intentional to reduce the boilerplate code you have to write. If the widget contains any solid annotation, it will be converted into a StatefulWidget by the code generator.

Note

You can still write StatefulWidget classes if you need, but you probably don’t have any reason to do it with Solid.

Why my StatelessWidget is not immutable?

The StatelessWidget you write is not immutable because it contains mutable variables. That’s why I suggest to add:

analysis_options.yaml

analyzer:
  errors:
    must_be_immutable: ignore

So you can ignore it. But don’t worry, the generated code will be immutable and follow all the best practices. The code you write in the source directory needs to be valid Dart code, even if it’s optimized later.

Why not using Macros?

The feature to add macros in Dart has been stopped, as you can read here

Why not using augmentations?

Augmentations in Dart have not been released yet, in addition, they are more limited than macros.

For instance, you cannot augment a function that contains a body. So we can’t have fine grained reactivity in the build of our widgets.

Why flutter_solidart as state management?

I’m the author of flutter_solidart so I’m surely biased. But having a state manament library that has an automatic reactive system helps a lot. For instance, in solidart you can write:

final counter = Signal(0);
late final doubleCounter = Computed(() => counter.value * 2);

And it just works.

In addition, SignalBuilder automatically reacts to any signal detected inside its builder. So I didn’t have to generate any complex transpiler. If I had to work with ValueNotifier and ValueListenableBuilder, the amount of complexity and boilerplate would have been enormous.

Why writing code in the source directory and not on lib?

Solid is not a simple code generator. In fact it doesn’t compile code, but it transpiles it. For instance, the code you write gets transformed in a working code.

For the limitations of how Flutter works, your app needs to be built from the lib directory. So the code I transpile must be transpiled in the lib folder.

Note

You can change the input and output directory by passing --source and --output to the solid command if you really need to.

Why did I created Solid?

You can learn more in my blog post here

How can I use Solid with other generators?

Modify (or add) the build.yaml file in your project root.

build.yaml

targets:
  $default:
    sources:
      - lib/**
      - $package$
      - source/**

This way, other generators will also consider the source directory as input.

Then in one Terminal tab you simply use solid --watch to keep Solid running in watch mode. In another Terminal tab you can run dart run build_runner build --delete-conflicting-outputs to run other generators.

Then write your code in the source directory, using part statements or what generators need.