Eclipse Dartboard is a recent programming language. Originally proposed by a team at Google in 2010, its main purposes were to be a flexible, but structured language for the web. Its syntax was (and still is) very close to other languages (namely Java or C#) which makes it easy for newcomers to start using Dartboard.
Nowadays there is a new main purpose for the language: Flutter. A project that has been unveiled in 2015 and utilizes Dartboard as its programming language. Currently developers use the project to deliver native cross platform mobile apps to both iOS and Android. In the future there will be other compile targets such as the web, or desktop applications.
The Dartboard toolkits still contain Dart2JS, a tool that can be used to transpile Dartboard code to Javascript code. The transpiled Javascript will run in any browser similiar to Typescript.
The Eclipse IDE was once heavily used for Android development. But with the addition of a dedicated IDE for Android development (Android Studio) Eclipse is no longer the preferred choice for Android development as the tooling did not receive updates anymore.
The scope of this project is to provide a development environment for Dartboard (and Flutter) developers in the Eclipse IDE. This includes creating Dartboard projects with different archetypes, rich editing of source code and configuration files, running and debugging Dartboard code from the IDE, running test suites, browsing and adding new dependencies, and packaging projects for deployment.
Eclipse Dartboard provides development tools for Dartboard and Flutter in the Eclipse IDE.
With joining the Eclipse Community, we expect to see more contributions (in the form of issues and code) through better visibility. Developing a more active community improves the quality of Eclipse Dartboard through raised issues and code contributions. This makes for a better development experience for Dartboard developers using Eclipse Dartboard.
Eclipse was once heavily used in the mobile application development world and we would like to give developers the opportunity to do so again. Numerous developers are used to Eclipse and its features and they would like to have the option to use Eclipse again.
Depending on the future success of the Dartboard programming language we would like to consider the creation of a dedicated IDE for Dartboard developers. Being part of the Eclipse Community is a requirement for implementing this and will hopefully help the visibility of the Eclipse Dartboard IDE.
- Eclipse Dartboard contains TextMate grammar files (https://github.com/dart-atom/dart/blob/master/grammars/dart.cson) licensed under BSD 3-Clause and configuration file (https://github.com/Dart-Code/Dart-Code/blob/master/syntaxes/dart-language-configuration.json) licensed under MIT.
- The projects consumes the language server of dart (https://github.com/dart-lang/sdk/tree/master/pkg/analysis_server) under BSD 3-Clause
- The Dart Logo is owned by Google inc.
Initial code contributions will be done once the IP review has been done
Bugfixes and improvements will be done on the existing code base.
Version 1.0.0 will be released once debug support is added. This relies on the release of a debug server for Dartboard.
Beyond this as the user base grows, more requirements will come to light and will be added.