Find and version bump outdated packages in Flutter (across major versions)

With the latest beta versions of Flutter (v1.17) there is now a pub command to check for, and update, outdated dependencies.

To check for outdated dependencies, run:

$ flutter pub outdated -h
Analyze dependencies to find which ones can be upgraded.
This runs the "pub" tool in a Flutter context.

Usage: flutter pub outdated [<arguments...>]
-h, --help    Print this usage information.

Run "flutter help" to see global options.

and this gives output like:

$ flutter pub outdated
Dependencies                           Current              Upgradable           Resolvable           Latest
path                                   *1.6.4               *1.6.4               *1.6.4               1.7.0
permission_handler                     *4.4.0+hotfix.4      *4.4.0+hotfix.4      5.0.0+hotfix.3       5.0.0+hotfix.3

dev_dependencies
analyzer                               *0.36.4              *0.36.4              *0.36.4              0.39.7
build_runner                           *1.7.4               *1.7.4               *1.7.4               1.9.0

transitive dependencies
asn1lib                                *0.5.15              *0.5.15              *0.5.15              0.6.4
permission_handler_platform_interface  *1.0.0               *1.0.0               2.0.0                2.0.0

transitive dev_dependencies
build                                  *1.1.6               *1.1.6               *1.1.6               1.2.2
build_config                           *0.4.1+1             *0.4.1+1             *0.4.1+1             0.4.2
dart_style                             *1.2.9               *1.2.9               *1.2.9               1.3.6

1 upgradable dependency is locked (in pubspec.lock) to an older version.
To update it, use `pub upgrade`.

4  dependencies are constrained to versions that are older than a resolvable version.
To update these dependencies, edit pubspec.yaml.

To update with compatible dependencies, run:

flutter pub upgrade

or to update with potentially breaking changes, use

flutter pub upgrade --major-versions

After release of Flutter 2.0 you can follow these flutter command lines to upgrade dependency packages automatically:

1. flutter pub outdated

2. flutter pub upgrade --major-versions

Flutter currently doesn't provide such a feature.
There might be 3rd-party packages that do that. The only one I know is den (https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/den), but this one is not maintained since quite some time and can't be used with recent Dart or Flutter versions.

What might help is to at least get a list of dependencies where newer versions are available.

Upvote https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/12627 for that.

In the meantime the workaround mentioned in https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/12627#issuecomment-400037072 can be used

Set FLUTTER_ROOT to your Flutter install directory and run pub upgrade. (this requires the Dart SDK to be installed in addition to the Flutter SDK)

$ export FLUTTER_ROOT="/Users/my_user/flutter"

$ pub upgrade
Resolving dependencies... (16.2s)
! analyzer 0.33.0 (overridden) (0.34.2 available)
  args 1.5.1
  async 2.0.8
  boolean_selector 1.0.4
! build 1.1.0 (overridden)
  built_collection 4.1.0
! built_redux 7.5.2 (overridden)
  built_value 6.2.0
  bwu_grinder_tasks 0.2.0-dev.0
  charcode 1.1.2
  cli_util 0.1.3+2
  collection 1.14.11
  contacts_service 0.0.9 (0.1.0 available)
> convert 2.1.1 (was 2.0.2)
  crypto 2.0.6
  csslib 0.14.6
  dart_style 1.2.2
  device_info 0.2.1 (0.3.0 available)
> file 5.0.7 (was 5.0.6)
> firebase_analytics 1.1.0 (was 1.0.6)
...