This has already been discussed in #16878, but it may have been closed prematurely.

The issue is still there (flutter doctor crashes without going further) when used e.g. on CI and installing SDK via Gradle. IIUC, this is a legitimate use case.

Here are the steps to reproduce:

1. Download Flutter via Git repository or archive
2. Set path to Flutter tool in Android application:

   $ echo "flutter.sdk=$FLUTTER_SDK_ROOT" > android/local.properties

   This is marginally legitimate, necessary step for bootstrapping :)
3. Copy license information from a developer's workstation
4. Run flutter doctor:

$ flutter doctor
Doctor summary (to see all details, run flutter doctor -v):
[✓] Flutter (Channel beta, v1.0.0, on Linux, locale en_US.UTF-8)
Android sdkmanager tool not found (/home/travis/sdk/android/tools/bin/sdkmanager).
Try re-installing or updating your Android SDK,
visit https://flutter.io/setup/#android-setup for detailed instructions.

I'd expect flutter doctor to go further and identify at least Dart SDK version etc.