Dart 2.6 supports creating self-contained executables

Dart 2.6 was announced on November 5, 2019. Version 2.6 arrives with dart2native, an extension for the compiler set.

With the new update, Dart can product self-contained, native executables.

Have you checked out the language since the implementation of v2.x? Dart 2 fully rebooted the language with a full redesign. It added a more streamlined type system, syntax, and rebuilt dev tool chain. All of these improvements lead to optimized web and mobile development. 2.6 builds upon this 2.x reboot.

dart2native

With Dart 2.6 onwards, the new dart2native compiler is available in the Dart SDK.

Programmers can use the command to compile a Dart program ahead-of-time to native x64 machine code. The result is a self-contained executable compiled from the Dart file or an ahead-of-time snapshot that does not include the Dart runtime.

Read more about the compiler and how to create a standalone executable and/or AOT snapshot in the documentation. The feature derives from this issue on GitHub requesting the feature for desktop devices.

According to the release blog, “the executables start running in just a few milliseconds”. The provided sample starts, prints to stdout, and exists in 49 milliseconds.

A few caveats remain. Currently, there is no cross-compilation support for different operating systems. Nor is there signaling support for the executables, or support for dart:mirrors and dart:developer . However, these limitations may all be resolved in a future update, based upon developer need.

💥Stable release of Dart 2.6 SDK!

Dart2native AOT-compiles Dart programs to self-contained executables for macOS, Windows, or Linux.

Create tools for the command line that your users can run even if they don’t have the Dart SDK.

More → https://t.co/PdPOTbYHb4 pic.twitter.com/JIY0pikpFM

— Dart Language (@dart_lang) November 5, 2019

Code editor demo

The dart_console package comes bundled with a demo for kilo, a small code editor written in roughly 500 lines of code.

It clocks in at only 7MB. With it, you can create console apps.

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Check out the source code on GitHub.

Feature preview: Extension methods

Test out extension methods as the feature continues active development. Extension methods will call static functions and be able to define extension members for instance, methods, operators, setters, and getters.

Read about the design plans and considerations.

C# and Kotlin already use static extension methods. If timing goes well, extension methods will be included in the next SDK version.

Feature preview graduates to beta: dart:ffi 

The new version of Foreign Function Interface in 2.6 introduces a number of breaking API changes. It makes APIs easier to use and provides easier access to memory.

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From the changelog, here are the breaking changes this introduces:

• Breaking change: The API now makes use of static extension members. Static extension members enable the dart:ffi API to be more precise with types, and provide convenient access to memory through extension getters and setters. The extension members on Pointer provide .value and .value = for accessing the value in native memory and [] and []= for indexed access. The method asExternalTypedData has been replaced with asTypedList extension methods. And finally, Structs do no longer have a type argument and are accessed using the extension member .ref on Pointer. These changes makes the code using dart:ffi much more concise.
• Breaking change: The memory management has been removed (Pointer.allocate and Pointer.free). Instead, memory management is available in package:ffi.
• Breaking change: Pointer.offsetBy was removed, use cast and elementAt instead.
• Faster memory load and stores.
• The dartanalyzer (commandline and IDEs) now reports dart:ffi static errors.
• Callbacks are now supported in AOT (ahead-of-time) compiled code.

Other changes

Miscellaneous changes include:

• Linter updated to 0.1.101
• Removed Pointer.offsetBy 
• dart:io library: Added IOOverrides.serverSocketBind