@matanlurey update as of 2024-11-20:

As of HEAD today, with the following feature flag opt-in:

flutter config explicit-package-dependencies

The generated .flutter-plugins-dependencies file now includes dev_dependency: true|false per plugin. See #158009 for implementation details. We should be able to use the explicit appearance of dev_dependency: true in order to strip out plugins (such as integration_test) that are dev dependencies in production builds.

Original post:

integration_test was added to the pubspec template in #70240. This caused all newly flutter created iOS apps to ship with an embedded integration_test framework, and it requires all developers to install CocoaPods, even if they had not previously used any plugins. It also embedded the app in add-to-app host apps.

#70240 was reverted in #74068 due to NNBD issues. Before it is relanded, there should be a plan for how to prevent the above.

See also #68818