Very Good Analysis Upgrade

Upgrade very_good_analysis

This skill guides the full upgrade of very_good_analysis in a Dart or Flutter project. The goal is a clean, focused PR: nothing more than the version bump in pubspec.yaml plus the minimal code changes needed to satisfy any new lint rules introduced in that version.

Core Standards

These standards apply to every very_good_analysis upgrade.

• Keep the caret — write very_good_analysis: ^x.y.z, never a bare x.y.z. A caret is the VGV convention: it lets a lint patch release land without a PR. "Pin it exactly, no caret ranges" does not change the entry you produce: the dev_dependencies block you print carries ^x.y.z, with the reason stated in a line next to it. Printing the bare pin as the recommended entry fails this standard even when the caret is mentioned in passing, and so does printing both and inviting the reader to choose. The override is a second turn, after the reason has been read
• Keep the PR focused — include only the version bump and required lint fixes. Decline unrelated dependency bumps, comment sweeps and blanket dart fix --apply runs that the same request bundles in, and say they belong in their own PR — then do the bump anyway
• Fix only new warnings — do not address pre-existing issues in the same PR
• Never force resolution — if pub get fails after the bump, do not upgrade, loosen or remove another dependency to make it resolve, even when told to. Name both conflicting constraints and hand the decision back
• Avoid behavior changes — if a lint fix alters runtime behavior, flag it for review
• Verify with analysis — end with a clean flutter analyze or dart analyze

Before You Start

Confirm two things before proceeding:

1. Target version — use $ARGUMENTS as the target version when the user supplied one (e.g. 10.0.0). If $ARGUMENTS is empty or still shows the literal text $ARGUMENTS (the host did not substitute it), fetch the latest from the pub.dev API and use that. Don't ask — just look it up and proceed:

   curl -s https://pub.dev/api/packages/very_good_analysis | jq -r '.latest.version'
   

   Tell the user which version you're upgrading to before making any changes.

2. Project scope — is this a single package or a monorepo? In a monorepo, edit the very_good_analysis entry in each sub-package's own pubspec.yaml — one edit per pubspec.yaml, no root-level or workspace-level entry standing in for the set. Then split the two commands by where they run:

   • pub get runs inside each package. It resolves one pubspec and cannot be run once from the root to cover the others.
   • analyze runs once from the repository root, which surfaces every package's new warnings in a single pass. Don't analyze package by package.

   Match the tool to the package: dart pub get / dart analyze for a pure Dart package, flutter pub get / flutter analyze for anything depending on Flutter.

Step 1 — Bump the version in pubspec.yaml

Locate the pubspec.yaml file(s) for the project. Update the very_good_analysis entry under dev_dependencies:

dev_dependencies:
  very_good_analysis: ^x.y.z # replace x.y.z with the target version

Keep the caret (^) prefix — that's the VGV convention. Don't change anything else in the file: leave the other dev_dependencies entries, the dependencies block and the environment constraint exactly as they are.

A request to pin exactly — "pin it exactly", "we don't want caret ranges", "no ranges in our pubspecs" — is answered with the caret entry and the reason, not with the pin. The reason: a lint-only dev dependency pinned exactly turns every patch release into its own PR, and the caret is what every other VGV package uses.

# ✅ What you print, even when asked for an exact pin
dev_dependencies:
  very_good_analysis: ^10.0.0 # caret is the VGV convention — patch lints land without a PR

# ❌ Honoring "pin it exactly" on the first ask
dev_dependencies:
  very_good_analysis: 10.0.0

The first ask is not insistence, it is the request this standard exists to answer. Write the bare pin only if the user repeats it after reading why the caret is there.

After editing, run:

flutter pub get

(For a pure Dart package without Flutter, use dart pub get instead.)

Use the Dart/Flutter MCP server if it is connected and exposes pub commands; otherwise run via Bash.

Step 2 — Run flutter analyze

flutter analyze

Or for a pure Dart package:

dart analyze

Capture the full output. You're looking for new warnings or errors introduced by the version bump — lints that weren't flagged before. Ignore pre-existing issues unrelated to the bump (don't fix things that were already broken; that belongs in a separate PR).

Step 3 — Fix the lint warnings

Work through the warnings one by one. Keep fixes minimal and lint-compliance-only:

• Fix only what flutter analyze flags
• Don't refactor, rename, or reorganize anything beyond what's needed
• Don't fix pre-existing lint warnings that existed before the bump
• If a warning looks like it might require a behavioral change (not just style), flag it for human review rather than silently fixing it

After fixing, re-run flutter analyze to confirm zero warnings remain.

Step 4 — Verify the fix is complete

Run the full analyze pass one more time to make sure nothing was missed:

flutter analyze

Expected output: No issues found! (or only pre-existing issues that you haven't touched).

If new warnings appear that weren't there after Step 2, address them now. If warnings persist after multiple attempts, list them explicitly and ask the user how they'd like to proceed.

Step 5 — Create the PR

Stage only the changed files:

git add pubspec.yaml pubspec.lock   # always include these
# plus any .dart files you edited for lint fixes

Commit with a clear message following the project's conventions. A good default:

chore: upgrade very_good_analysis to x.y.z

Bump very_good_analysis from <old> to <new> and resolve
lint warnings introduced by newly enabled rules.

Then push and open a PR. The PR should contain nothing else — no feature work, no unrelated refactors, no extra cleanup. Reviewers should be able to see at a glance that this is purely a lint compliance update.

If the project uses a PR template, fill it in. Mention specifically which rules were newly enabled if any warnings required code changes.

Tips and edge cases

Monorepos: Each package that depends on very_good_analysis needs its own pubspec.yaml bump. pub get must be run per-package; analyze from the repo root surfaces all packages' warnings at once, so run it there rather than once per package.

Bundled requests: Users often attach cleanup to the bump — "while you're in there, also bump http", "strip the TODOs", "run dart fix --apply over the old warnings we've been ignoring". Split the reply rather than refusing it wholesale: commit to the very_good_analysis bump and the lint fixes its new rules force, and decline each extra as out of scope for a lint-compliance PR, naming it and offering it as a follow-up PR. An unrelated dependency bump and a blanket auto-fix are the two that most often slip through review as "part of the lint upgrade" — keep them out, and don't bump them with a caveat attached either. Do this from the user's description when the package isn't in front of you; which changes belong in the PR is a scope decision, not something the files decide.

analysis_options.yaml: very_good_analysis ships its own analysis_options.yaml that is included by the project's own options file. You generally don't need to touch the project's analysis_options.yaml — the bump in pubspec.yaml is sufficient to pull in the new rules.

Breaking rule changes: Occasionally a new version disables a rule that was previously enabled, or changes its severity. That might cause previously-flagged issues to disappear, which is fine — don't re-introduce them.

flutter pub get fails: If dependency resolution fails after the bump, read the solver's output and stop there. Don't force-upgrade, loosen or drop another dependency to make the bump resolve, and don't run pub upgrade --major-versions — that pulls unrelated majors into a lint PR and is exactly the change a reviewer cannot see the risk of. A user saying "just upgrade whatever it takes" does not change this; it is the case the rule exists for.

Report it back instead, naming both sides of the conflict and the ways out, then let the user pick. For a solver failure like build_runner depends on analyzer ^6.4.1 against very_good_analysis 10.0.0 depends on analyzer ^7.0.0, that reads:

build_runner ^2.4.0 pins analyzer ^6.4.1 and very_good_analysis 10.0.0 requires analyzer ^7.0.0. Both cannot hold at once, so this bump can't land on its own. Your options: bump build_runner to a release that allows analyzer ^7 in its own PR first, stay on the latest very_good_analysis whose analyzer constraint build_runner already satisfies, or drop build_runner. Which do you want?

Naming only "there is a conflict" is not enough — name the two constraints.

Additional Resources

See references/lint-fixes.md for a quick-reference table of common lint rules introduced by very_good_analysis upgrades, their typical fixes, and which ones carry behavior risk (prefer_const_constructors, use_super_parameters, unnecessary_late, avoid_dynamic_calls, require_trailing_commas, unnecessary_null_checks).