Dart support

[isoos]

I'm wondering if there are plans for supporting Dart too (especially after the JS serialization is done, I imagine it wouldn't be that much different to do the codegen).

[aardappel]

I believe there has been some work on a Dart implementation, but it was never released. I don't know of anyone actively working on it, no.

[dnfield]

It looks to me like the Dart SDK implements at least some of it here:

https://github.com/dart-lang/sdk/blob/master/pkg/front_end/lib/src/base/flat_buffers.dart

@scheglov any good reason to not just split this out into its own package? I think this would be interesting to use particularly in Flutter projects

[asaarnak]

@dnfield Thanks for a comment, Google Search got me here. :)

Currently the official flatc schema compiler is not supporting dart code generation.

Seems only a format.fbs and format.dart files generated from idl.dart are using the flat_buffers.dart

Generation script:

1. format.fbs generate.dart#L377
2. format.dart generate.dart#L432

[dnfield]

I'm working on dart codegen.

[asaarnak]

Oh :) Then i was just investigateing interesting code.

[scheglov]

Yes, we use flat buffers in Dart, and like it.
Ideally yes, it would be a separate package.
Unfortunately we don't have time to do this and support it later :-(

[isoos]

@scheglov: How much work is needed to cover the spec and separate it into a package? Is the spec otherwise covered? I'd volunteer for some of that work.

[scheglov]

You're most welcome to use any existing flat buffers code for Dart. I honestly don't remember exact difference between the spec and implementation. I know we added one or two new things, like list of booleans.

[aardappel]

I'd generally recommend supporting it through the official compiler (flatc), as that'll make it more likely the implementation is correct, complete, and will have some future support. If anyone wants to work on a PR I'll happily review it.

[dnfield]

Yes, I'm working on implementing the code generation for flatc. However, it'd make sense for there to be a flat_buffers dart package (which would basically reuse the code implemented already) - similar to the flatbuffers npm package for JavaScript.

[aardappel]

@dnfield the npm package is generated from code in this repo, would it work similarly for Dart?

[dnfield]

I don't see why not.

[dnfield]

How should we handle the publication of flat_buffers.dart? I've had to make a few additions from what was in the front_end package (it was missing helpers for adding some typed data, like Int16/UInt16 and Float32s). I'm adding the up to date file to my brach of google/flatbuffers which has my start on Dart code gen.

Who owns, for example, publishing flatbuffers.js to NPM?

[aardappel]

I push to npm whenever I make a versioned release. If doing the same for Dart is just updating a version number and running a single command, I can do it as well :)