New Dart SDK helps eliminates symlinks
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...