Proposal for command line that shows packages that create dependency constraints incompatible with newer package

[stephane-archer]

Use case

When updating packages the suggested command doesn't make sense and results in a bad developer experience.

flutter pub upgrade --major-versions
Resolving dependencies... (2.6s)
Downloading packages...
  leak_tracker 10.0.4 (10.0.5 available)
  leak_tracker_flutter_testing 3.0.3 (3.0.5 available)
  material_color_utilities 0.8.0 (0.11.1 available)
  meta 1.12.0 (1.15.0 available)
  test_api 0.7.0 (0.7.1 available)
  vm_service 14.2.1 (14.2.2 available)
No dependencies changed.
6 packages have newer versions incompatible with dependency constraints.
Try `flutter pub outdated` for more information.

No changes to pubspec.yaml!
❯ flutter pub outdated
Showing outdated packages.
[*] indicates versions that are not the latest available.

Package Name  Current  Upgradable  Resolvable  Latest

direct dependencies: all up-to-date.

dev_dependencies: all up-to-date.
all dependencies are up-to-date.

Proposal

The suggested command should highlight packages that create outdated dependency constraints:

6 packages have newer versions incompatible with dependency constraints.

What package is responsible for that?

[darshankawar]

@stephane-archer
Can you check if your case resembles this or not ?

[stephane-archer]

@darshankawar This is not about showing discontinued packages, it's about recommending a command line that shows packages that create dependency constraints incompatible with newer package

[gnprice]

Here's the issue for this feature request in the pub tracker:

• Feature to show which depencency is restricting upgrade dart-lang/pub#3545

I agree it would be a useful feature. There's also a tip at dart-lang/pub#3545 (comment) about how you can get that information today (add a newer version in pubspec.yaml and rerun flutter pub get).

---

Meanwhile the reason flutter pub outdated doesn't say much is that the affected dependencies are indirect dependencies (which after all is why they weren't upgraded). You can find more with flutter pub outdated --transitive.

Coincidentally there's an issue just yesterday about that:

• "Packages have newer versions" disagrees with dart pub outdated dart-lang/pub#4273

Even with --transitive the information printed doesn't answer your original question, though.

---

In this specific example, I think the answer to "what package is responsible for that" is Flutter itself — those all look like packages that the Flutter SDK pins versions of. So the way to upgrade them is to upgrade to the latest Flutter from main.

[andrewkolos]

Hello and thanks for contributing this issue. I was going to say that this should instead be tracked in the pub repo, but it looks like that's already the case (thanks for the fantastic research @gnprice). Because of this, I'll be closing this issue now. Please reopen if I misunderstood.