Seth Ladd's Blog

tldr: In Dart 1.12, you can now dynamically load the contents of files/assets from package dependencies. The new Resource class is currently implemented in the VM, with dart2js support coming in a future release. Motivation Dart applications are rarely just a collection of .dart files from a single developer. Real-world Dart apps often include numerous package dependencies, which contain additional Dart libraries as well as assets such as images, configuration files, template files, and more. It's always been possible to import third-party libraries with Dart's package: URI scheme, however prior to Dart 1.12 it was not possible to access non-Dart files via package: URIs. For example, consider a tool such as stagehand , which generates new Dart projects such as web apps, server apps, pub packages, and more. The source of the new projects are stored as files and templates inside the stagehand package. Somehow, the stagehand tool needs to reference and load files from i...

In which we retell the story of Dart and symlinks, investigate the new .packages file, and create a simpler world for Dart developers everywhere. tldr: The Dart team is working towards a world where symlinks are no longer required because of the new .packages file. Why a new solution for locating packages? In the long long ago, during the before times (aka 2011), Dart could only run monolithic scripts and apps. In those early days, Dart didn't have support for packages/shared libraries. Then came package: URIs, which opened the door for sharing code. However, the platform only had one way to resolve that package: URI: look inside a packages/ directory next to the file importing the library. (Later, a --package-root option was added for more flexibility.) Thus began Dart's reliance on symlinks  as a way of creating the packages/ directories next to all locations containing Dart scripts or libraries. Those symlinks and the package: scheme helped ushered in a boom of t...