Dartle Documentation

Dartle as a Dart library

Dartle can be used as a simple Dart library to drive a derived build system.

The Dartle Overview shows how to write a build script for compiling C programs. With a little more work to allow configuring the build using something other than just the Dart script, the resulting script can be compiled to an executable without any dependency on Dartle or the Dart runtime!

As an example, the DartleC project was created based on the Dartle Overview final code. DartleC is compiled to an executable, dcc, and is configured via a YAML file, dcc.yaml.

The executable is as small as 6Mb, runs really fast, and can be easily compiled on any Operating System supported by Dart. This makes Dartle an attractive choice for authoring build tools.

Another example build tool that uses Dartle is jb, a Java build tool. It also used a YAML file for configuration, but allows extensions (which add new Dartle tasks) to be written in any JVM language. Extending it is also possible in Dart because, just like Dartle, jb is a Dart library and hence, can be used in the same way.