The Comprehensive Guide to Using C/C++ in Flutter — Part I

Flutter, a UI development kit by Google, leverages its own rendering engine for pixel-perfect UI consistency across platforms. While Flutter and its Dart language excel in UI development, they fall short when it comes to low-level tasks like hardware access and multithreaded programming, necessitating the use of C/C++. This guide focuses on integrating C/C++ code into Flutter apps, covering essential aspects like build tool configuration, debugging, and utilizing Dart FFI for bidirectional communication. The guide provides instructions on initializing Flutter projects with C/C++ support and configuring CMake to build static libraries for macOS and iOS, ensuring compatibility with CocoaPods. For Android, Linux, and Windows, the project leverages dynamic library loading for seamless integration. The guide also emphasizes the importance of removing duplicate C++ source files to avoid compile errors. To test the modified build scripts, the guide provides commands for running Flutter applications on various platforms. Finally, the guide concludes with a preview of the upcoming chapter, which will delve into debugging C/C++ code within Flutter apps using various IDEs.