description

While backing up some build results in an git-ignored project folder, i encountered an annoying bug with regard to assets. The mentioned folder was included in the next flutter build windows output in the flutter_assets folder, despite not being specified in the pubspec.yaml as assets folder. I could also reproduce this in a newly created project.

steps to reproduce

1. flutter create test_assets
2. Create a folder test_dir, create a file CHANGELOG.md
3. pubspec.yaml

name: test_assets

description: A new Flutter project.



publish_to: 'none' # Remove this line if you wish to publish to pub.dev

version: 1.0.0+1

environment:
  sdk: '>=2.18.2 <3.0.0'

dependencies:
  flutter:
    sdk: flutter

  cupertino_icons: ^1.0.2

dev_dependencies:
  flutter_test:
    sdk: flutter

  flutter_lints: ^2.0.0

flutter:

  uses-material-design: true
  assets:
   
    - assets/
    - CHANGELOG.md

4. flutter build windows
5. copy build/windows/runner/Release to test_dir
6. flutter build windows
7. now you can find a file ...\test_assets\build\windows\runner\Release\data\flutter_assets\test_dir\Release\data\flutter_assets\CHANGELOG.md in the build results.

This would increases the app size with every build, despite the test_dirfolder not being specified as assets folder.

expected result

7. the test_dir folder is not included in the flutter_assets.

remarks

It looks like the cause for this is, that there is a CHANGELOG.md file found in the test_dir folder, and this filename is specified in the assets in the pubspec.yaml. But the intention is the inclusion of the top level test_assets/CHANGELOG.md file. Replacing the assets paragraph in the pubspec.yaml with relative paths does not fix the problem, unfortunally:

  assets:
   
    - ./assets/
    - ./CHANGELOG.md

environment

Target Platform: windows
Flutter version: 3.3.5

flutter doctor output:

Doctor summary (to see all details, run flutter doctor -v):
[✓] Flutter (Channel stable, 3.3.5, on Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19045.2251], locale de-DE)
[✓] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices (Android SDK version 32.1.0-rc1)
[✓] Chrome - develop for the web
[✓] Visual Studio - develop for Windows (Visual Studio Community 2022 17.0.5)
[✓] Android Studio (version 2021.3)
[✓] VS Code (version 1.73.1)
[✓] Connected device (3 available)
[✓] HTTP Host Availability

• No issues found!