Installation

Finch is a server-side web framework for Dart. This page covers the prerequisites and steps to install it.

Prerequisites

• Dart SDK — Finch requires Dart 3.x or later. Download from dart.dev/get-dart.
• A terminal and a text editor (VS Code with the Dart extension is recommended).

Install the Finch CLI

The Finch CLI provides project scaffolding, build, serve, and migration commands.

dart pub global activate finch

After activation, verify the installation:

finch --version

Create a New Project

finch create

Run without flags, finch create interactively asks for a project name and whether to use Docker. Everything else has a sensible default: the project is created in a directory named after the project, and the template defaults to simple unless you override it with -t/--template. To skip the prompts entirely:

finch create -n my_app -p ./my_app -t example -d

Run finch templates to list the official templates available for -t (fetched live from GitHub). The example template mirrors the project used throughout this documentation and includes MongoDB, MySQL, SQLite, WebSocket, i18n, forms, and API documentation examples; simple is a minimal starting point. If you don't pass -d/--docker and answer "no" to the Docker prompt, the generated project's Dockerfile, .dockerignore, and docker-compose.yaml are removed automatically.

Run the New Project

cd my_app
dart pub get
finch serve

finch serve starts the dev server with a file watcher — widget and language files are picked up automatically without a restart. See Running an Application for the difference between serve (development) and a compiled binary (production).

Add Finch to an Existing Project

dart pub add finch

Then run:

dart pub get

You'll still need the lib/app.dart setup and a routing function by hand — see Running an Application for the minimal structure, since dart pub add only adds the dependency, not the scaffolding that finch create generates.

Updating Finch

finch -u

Updates the globally activated finch CLI itself (equivalent to dart pub global activate finch again). To upgrade the finch package dependency inside a project, use the normal Dart tooling instead: dart pub upgrade finch.

Next Step

See Finch CLI for all available commands, or jump to Configuration to set up your first application.