Error deploying on appwrite site

[grim rivet]

Hello.

I'm learning to program in Flutter, and after creating my first app, I concluded that I would use AppWrite as the backend. So, I created a very simple app to test and learn how the connection between my app and AppWrite works.

My experience with web programming is still very basic, so I'm asking for your help.

I'm not using Git, so I'm trying to manually deploy my web app to AppWrite Cloud. I created the web app with the "flutter build --release" command, compressed the files created in the "build/web" directory into a tar.gz file, and downloaded it to AppWrite. But after a few seconds, AppWrite returns the following error:

2025-08-17T00:11:25.450112689Z Expected to find project root in current working directory.

2025-08-17T00:11:30.000000000Z The build file was not created.

I downloaded the same files to a local web server and everything works correctly. I've searched the internet and the AppWrite documentation, but I can't find anything that helps me solve the problem.

Error deploying on appwrite site

[obtuse quest]

Heyy, are those all logs you got, or was there something before it?

Also, not sure I understood - have you uploaded just output after running build on your PC, or did you upload entire flutter source code?

[grim rivet]

Heyy Mateje
First of all, thanks for your help.

The full log is as follows:

2025-08-17T00:11:24.822911387Z [00:11:24] [open-runtimes] Environment preparation started.
2025-08-17T00:11:24.863443744Z [00:11:24] [open-runtimes] Environment preparation completed.
2025-08-17T00:11:24.865210024Z [00:11:24] [open-runtimes] Build command execution started.
2025-08-17T00:11:25.450112689Z Expected to find project root in current working directory.
2025-08-17T00:11:30.000000000Z The build file was not created.

I uploaded the generated files after running the flutter build command.

[obtuse quest]

Heyy, it's pretty late for me, but Ill look into this first thing tomorrow morning 🙌 let me ping myself, @obtuse quest , so I have notification waiting for me 😅

[grim rivet]

Thank you very much for your help. Have a good rest. 🙂

[obtuse quest]

Good good, so just a summary, to make sure we are on the same page:

1. You have Flutter project, on your PC
2. In Flutter project directory, you ran command flutter build web
3. Build succeeded, generating folder build/web, and inside there are couple of files, including index.html
4. You went inside this web folder, and ran tar --exclude code.tar.gz -zcf ./code.tar.gz .
5. You went to Appwrite Console > Project > Sites > Create site > Create manually
6. You drag&drop code.tar.gz, and switch framework to Flutter

^ Is everything accurate so far? If not, it might be best to follow those steps once, to make sure we are on 100% same point here

Now, you need to make a small change.
Appwrite Sites consider a site Flutter, when you upload flutter project. This way, Appwrite will do build for you.
But, you do build on your PC, and upload output. So for this flow, let's continue like this:
7. Switch framework to "Other"
8. Click Deploy, to create site
9. Wait a little, and you site should be live ✅

Please let me know if this works 🙌 If not, we can debug further.

Later-on, when your site grows, and you will need to redeploy often, we can chat and setup a site as "Flutter" framework, not "Other". Benefit will be that you just upload entire Flutter proejct as is, and Appwrite will build it for you.

To automate even further, we can later talk about Appwrite CLI too - you just run 1 command and your site gets updated 🔥 No need for zipping, drag&drop ,stuff like that.
Alternativelly, we could use GitHub to integrate 100% automatic - you push to a branch, and your site gets updated.