TLDR: the generate: true behavior prevents pub's up to date check from working when combined with path dependencies. The pub issue is: dart-lang/pub#2806

Short term solutions:

• Tell users to disable generate: true
• Have pub special case this package

Long-term solutions

Besides removing generate, we could replace the special generate keyword with a path dependency. This would have the same properties as the current generated package, but would work with pub.

pubspec.yaml

flutter:
  generate: true
  
 dependencies:
   ...

Becomes

flutter:
 dependencies:
   flutter_gen:
     path: .dart_tool/flutter_gen
   ...

The tool can use the presence of that path dependency to opt in.

cc @jonasfj @zanderso @shihaohong