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Uniting Flutter on web and mobile, and introducing Flutter 1.9

36 points by doppp 7y ago

happa 7y ago
I hope they are able to release a preview of Flutter on desktop early next year. C-interop for Dart sounds great and might be able to compensate the somewhat lacking native Dart ecosystem.
- childintime 7y ago
  What might be the concrete use cases of C integration? ML? I'd rather have integrated support for Wifi access (and Bluetooth), for Arduino-style Iot. Things never quite work as intended (even within an Android version).
  - csells 7y ago
    As one concrete use case, you could use Dart FFI to call Win32 APIs that implement Flutter plugins that support Windows. You should have network access via wifi w/o any trouble today but we do have work to do to support Bluetooth better. Chris Sells PM, Flutter developer experience
childintime 7y ago
The big issue with Flutter on the Web is if the app acts like it is a part of the web, with selectable text. Otherwise it feels like an Abobe Flash substitute: good for some type of applications, not so for others. Inspectable source code would also be desirable. What's the status on selectable text?
- timsneath 7y ago
  Early days, but this release offers selectable text, right-click context menu provided by the browser. During development, source code is JavaScript with source maps for debugging the original Dart code from the likes of Chrome DevTools. We also have a production compiler that generates optimized JavaScript when you're ready to deploy. (Disclosure: I'm on the Flutter team)
bsaul 7y ago
« Support for bitcode » ??? I’m extremely confused. Isn’t bitcode equivalent to llvm IL ? Doesn’t dart have its own compiler ?
- csells 7y ago
  Dart does have it's own compiler that targets the native instruction set for supported platforms, e.g. 32-bit and 64-bit ARM for Android and iOS, x86 for Windows and macOS, etc. We're experimenting with bitcode in case Apple decides in the future that they're rather have iOS and/or macOS apps be submitted that way instead of ARM or x86, as they already have for tvOS and watchOS. Chris Sells PM, Flutter developer experience
turbo_fart_box 7y ago
Why would you want to learn Fart? Useless language. If they made it work with typescript it would be a react native contender
- csells 7y ago
  If you're writing Dart targeting Flutter for web (flutter.dev/web) you are able to make calls into JavaScript/TypeScript. Chris Sells PM, Flutter developer experience
wpdev_63 7y ago
It would be really amazing if they exposed a C-based interface to flutter. Using performant flutter to target multiple platforms with languages with better library support would be killer. Though it is understandable that google wants to cultivate their language ecosystems.

36 points by doppp 7y ago

I hope they are able to release a preview of Flutter on desktop early next year. C-interop for Dart sounds great and might be able to compensate the somewhat lacking native Dart ecosystem.

childintime 7y ago
What might be the concrete use cases of C integration? ML? I'd rather have integrated support for Wifi access (and Bluetooth), for Arduino-style Iot. Things never quite work as intended (even within an Android version).
- csells 7y ago
  As one concrete use case, you could use Dart FFI to call Win32 APIs that implement Flutter plugins that support Windows. You should have network access via wifi w/o any trouble today but we do have work to do to support Bluetooth better. Chris Sells PM, Flutter developer experience

childintime 7y ago

The big issue with Flutter on the Web is if the app acts like it is a part of the web, with selectable text. Otherwise it feels like an Abobe Flash substitute: good for some type of applications, not so for others. Inspectable source code would also be desirable. What's the status on selectable text?

timsneath 7y ago
Early days, but this release offers selectable text, right-click context menu provided by the browser. During development, source code is JavaScript with source maps for debugging the original Dart code from the likes of Chrome DevTools. We also have a production compiler that generates optimized JavaScript when you're ready to deploy. (Disclosure: I'm on the Flutter team)

bsaul 7y ago

« Support for bitcode » ??? I’m extremely confused. Isn’t bitcode equivalent to llvm IL ? Doesn’t dart have its own compiler ?

csells 7y ago
Dart does have it's own compiler that targets the native instruction set for supported platforms, e.g. 32-bit and 64-bit ARM for Android and iOS, x86 for Windows and macOS, etc. We're experimenting with bitcode in case Apple decides in the future that they're rather have iOS and/or macOS apps be submitted that way instead of ARM or x86, as they already have for tvOS and watchOS. Chris Sells PM, Flutter developer experience

turbo_fart_box 7y ago

Why would you want to learn Fart? Useless language. If they made it work with typescript it would be a react native contender

csells 7y ago
If you're writing Dart targeting Flutter for web (flutter.dev/web) you are able to make calls into JavaScript/TypeScript. Chris Sells PM, Flutter developer experience

wpdev_63 7y ago

It would be really amazing if they exposed a C-based interface to flutter. Using performant flutter to target multiple platforms with languages with better library support would be killer. Though it is understandable that google wants to cultivate their language ecosystems.