When you put Dart source code in a repository—using the pub tool, GitHub, or another source code management system—don’t include most of the files that your IDE or code editor, the pub tool, and other tools generate.

The rules

Don’t commit the following files and directories created by pub:

.dart_tool/
build/
pubspec.lock  # Except for application packages

Don’t commit the API documentation directory created by dart doc:

doc/api/

Don’t commit files and directories created by other development environments. For example, if your development environment creates any of the following files, consider putting them in a global ignore file:

# IntelliJ
*.iml
*.ipr
*.iws
.idea/

# Mac
.DS_Store

For more details, read on.

Details

As a rule, commit only the files that people need to use your package or source code repository. Including additional files is unnecessary, could be counterproductive, and might have security implications if you expose details about your machine’s setup. In many source code repositories, the common practice is not to commit generated files, at all.

To avoid committing files that are specific to your personal workflow or setup, consider using a global ignore file (for example, .gitignore_global).

When you use pub from within a Git repo, pub ignores the same files that Git does. For example, if you run pub publish from a Git repo that has a .gitignore file containing keys.txt, then your published package won’t contain the keys.txt file.

For more information on .gitignore files, see the GitHub help page Ignoring files.

.dart_tool/

The .dart_tool/ directory contains files used by various Dart tools.

pubspec.lock

The pubspec.lock file is a special case, similar to Ruby’s Gemfile.lock.

For regular packages, don’t commit the pubspec.lock file. Regenerating the pubspec.lock file lets you test your package against the latest compatible versions of its dependencies.

For application packages, we recommend that you commit the pubspec.lock file. Versioning the pubspec.lock file ensures changes to transitive dependencies are explicit. Each time the dependencies change due to dart pub upgrade or a change in pubspec.yaml the difference will be apparent in the lock file.