What is the caret sign (^) before the dependency version number in Flutter's pubspec.yaml?

Question

In the pubspec.yaml file of my Flutter project there is a caret (^) before the version number of some of the dependencies.

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Answer 1

The caret sign ^ means the specified version and all newer versions that don't introduce breaking changes relative to the specified version.

Dart follows Semantic Versioning and suggests that to be used for package maintainers as well.

Semantic Versioning defines that

• For versions >= 1.0.0, the major version needs to be incremented for breaking changes.
• For versions < 1.0.0, the minor version needs to be incremented for breaking changes.

Example:

^2.4.3 means >= 2.4.3 < 3.0.0

^0.17.19 means >= 0.17.19 <0.18.0