Dart News & Updates

If you publish Dart packages or like to use early releases of the Dart SDK, the next few months are going to be interesting, as apps and packages adapt to the changes required by Dart 2.0 . To make the process smoother, the pub tool that’s in Dart 2.0 pre-releases allows developers to download (and attempt to use) packages that don’t explicitly support Dart 2.0. The upshot: Use a stable Dart SDK if you need reliability . Use a pre-release Dart 2.0 SDK if you’d like to test published packages with Dart 2.0. Report any issues you find to the package maintainer. If you publish packages , be careful about SDK constraints, and expect feedback from developers trying your packages with Dart 2.0. The Dart 2.0 update page has all the details, but here’s an overview of what to expect, based on your development environment and the kind of code you write. If you use Flutter: In the short term, your Flutter code isn’t affected. When Flutter updates its Dart SDK to a ...

AngularDart v4 is now available. We've been busy since the release angular2 v3.1.0 in May. Not only did we "drop the 2", but we also improved the compiler and tightened up the framework to give you smaller code, we updated the package structure to improve usability, and we added several new features. Check out the updated documentation to get started. Just angular Upgrading to v4 will require more than updating your version constraint. The package has changed names (back) to angular – dropping the 2. You'll need to update your pubspec.yaml and the corresponding imports in your code. In most instances, find-and-replace should do the trick. Going forward, the package will be called package:angular . We'll just update the version number. Smaller code The updated compiler in 4.0 allows type-based optimizations that not only improve runtime performance but generate better code because we are able to strongly type templates. A big result of the update is that...

Hot reload on save By request, we now support doing a hot reload on file save. On an explicit save (cmd-s / ctrl-s or File > Save All), if there’s an app currently running we will try to reload changes into that app. This integrates well with how IntelliJ’s save action works — the default behavior of the action maps to a save-all command. If there are analysis errors on save, instead of reloading we will highlight errors in the analysis view. This behavior is off by default and can be turned on in Settings > Languages & Frameworks > Flutter. Feedback on this feature is much appreciated and will help us make additional improvements to the workflow. In particular, should we enable this feature by default? Improved project wizard We’ve updated the new project wizard! You can now choose which type of Flutter project to create: an app, a plugin project – to expose native services, or a package – to create a reusable Dart library. In add...

One of the most important features for Dart 2.0, strong mode , has been available for several releases. Migrate to strong mode now to take advantage of the new sound type system that finds errors at compile time (rather than letting your users discover them). You may even find bugs that have been lurking in your code.  If you are using Flutter, it already uses strong mode, so you have met this requirement.  Strong mode is the primary breaking change for 2.0, but there are likely to be other updates. For more information, see Dart 2.0 Updates.

New testing support We’ve added the ability to run individual Flutter tests via actions in the editor’s gutter: And now support running Flutter’s widget tests; see https://flutter.io/testing/# widget-testing . Project structure We re-worked how we define Flutter project and module types in IntelliJ. This addresses a few outstanding issues and will let us more easily go into more IntelliJ based products in the future. The next time you open an existing project with the new version of the plugin, you’ll see a one-time ‘module type updated’ message: Launching improvements This release sports several improvements to app launching: Launch your app in profile and release modes (available via the ‘Run’ menu) Start Android emulators from the device dropdown; this requires the Android AVDs to have been already created in something like Android Studio Tweaks to when the run and reload buttons are enabled For more detailed info on the version 16.0 release, s...

We’re aflutter to announce the official Dart conference in Los Angeles on January 23-24, 2018. The event will be even bigger and better than last year, with exciting talks about Dart 2.0, Flutter, Dart Dev Compiler, AngularDart, and much more. UPDATE : Please learn more and register here . We’re moving the annual conference from October to January for two reasons: We want our speakers to be available for the other conferences that are happening in the Fall. Each year, September to November is full of events where the team can reach developers unaware of the awesomeness of all things Dart. Likewise, we don’t want you to have to choose between DartConf and other great events. Lots of new things are coming to Dart in the new year. Place: Google Los Angeles Time: January 23-24, 2018 Pre-registration: [CLICK HERE] The event will be live-streamed and sessions will be recorded. Ask questions at dartconf-questions@googlegroups.com.

Flutter test support! We now support running and debugging ‘flutter test’ tests! Right click on your Flutter tests in the test/ directory, and choose the ‘Run’ or ‘Debug’ option: The results are displayed in the standard IntelliJ test runner. The support for this just recently landed in Flutter’s alpha channel, so you don’t see support for it in IntelliJ, you may want to run ‘flutter upgrade’. Happy testing! Improved project creation When creating a new Flutter project, you now have the option of installing the Flutter SDK from the new project wizard. This will help new users get started – they can create their first Flutter project without having to make a detour to the command line. In addition, we’ve improved the error reporting on project creation failures. Reload feedback improvements Based on user feedback, we’ve made some improvements to the UI for hot reload. When clicking the hot reload button (or using the reload key binding), we disable the hot reload ...