The Dart SDK, Projects and pubspec.yaml

One tool for everything

Install the Dart SDK on its own or get it bundled with Flutter. The single dart command covers the whole workflow: dart create scaffolds a project (console app, package, server or web templates), dart run runs it, dart test runs tests, dart analyze reports static analysis issues, dart format formats code, dart fix --apply applies automated fixes, dart pub add <package> adds dependencies and dart compile exe builds a native executable. A project is described by pubspec.yaml: the package name, the Dart SDK constraint (sdk: ^3.5.0), dependencies and dev_dependencies from pub.dev with version constraints, and other metadata. pubspec.lock records exact resolved versions; commit it for applications (and for packages it is usually not committed). Conventional layout: bin/ for entry points, lib/ for library code (with lib/src/ for private implementation), test/ for tests. VS Code and IntelliJ/Android Studio have excellent Dart plugins, and DartPad lets you run Dart and Flutter snippets in the browser.

Creating and running a console project

pubspec.yaml declares the SDK range and dependencies.

dart create -t console order_tools
cd order_tools
dart pub add http
dart pub add --dev test lints
dart run
dart test
dart analyze
dart format .
dart compile exe bin/order_tools.dart -o build/order_tools

# pubspec.yaml (excerpt)
# name: order_tools
# environment:
#   sdk: ^3.5.0
# dependencies:
#   http: ^1.2.0
# dev_dependencies:
#   lints: ^5.0.0
#   test: ^1.25.0

A Swiss Army knife

Where other ecosystems need separate tools for running, testing, formatting and packaging, dart is one Swiss Army knife with a blade for each job, all the same version and working together.

Quick check: Which file declares a Dart package's dependencies and SDK constraint?

• package.json
• build.gradle
• Cargo.toml
• pubspec.yaml