nativeapi 0.5.7 does not compile on Dart 3.14 (beta): Isolate.create unshipped

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
48/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
dart, flutter
Domain
desktop-dev

Research direction

Start by reading lib/nativeapi.dart and lib/src/run_native_app.dart, then reproduce the failure with the Dart 3.14 beta using the issue’s pubspec.yaml and dart compile kernel command. The suggested direction is to separate the runNativeApp export so unrelated users can compile; also investigate a Dart 3.14-compatible approach for its isolate APIs. Done means the reproduction compiles on the beta without requiring users who do not call runNativeApp to use the experimental flag.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Problem

With the Dart 3.14 beta SDK (3.14.0-315.3.beta, Flutter beta 3.50.0-0.3.pre), any program importing package:nativeapi/nativeapi.dart 0.5.7 fails to compile:

nativeapi-0.5.7/lib/src/run_native_app.dart:45:25: Error: Member not found: 'Isolate.create'.
    final app = Isolate.create(debugName: 'nativeapi');
                        ^^^^^^

It compiles with Dart 3.13.7 (stable).

Cause

Dart 3.14 unships the experimental isolate APIs that were accidentally exposed in Dart 3.13 (dart-lang/sdk#64285, dart:isolate section of the 3.14 CHANGELOG): Isolate.create, Isolate.runSync and Isolate.runEventLoopSync are removed from dart:isolate, and NativeCallable.isolateGroupBound is now gated behind the --experimental-shared-data VM flag. runNativeApp in lib/src/run_native_app.dart uses all four.

lib/nativeapi.dart exports src/run_native_app.dart on every non-web platform, so the file is compiled for every user of the library, including Flutter apps that never call runNativeApp. That also covers every user of package:window_manager/window_manager.dart 0.6.0, which re-exports package:nativeapi/nativeapi.dart (a show list does not stop the library from being compiled). Their tests fail to load on the beta channel.

Reproduction

pubspec.yaml:

name: nativeapi_repro
publish_to: none
environment:
  sdk: ^3.13.0
dependencies:
  nativeapi: 0.5.7

bin/main.dart:

import 'package:nativeapi/nativeapi.dart';

void main() {
  print(WindowManager.instance);
}

dart pub get
dart compile kernel bin/main.dart

Dart 3.14.0-315.3.beta: the error above. Dart 3.13.7: compiles.

Suggestion

Moving runNativeApp out of nativeapi.dart into its own library (for example package:nativeapi/run_native_app.dart) would let Flutter apps and window_manager compile on Dart 3.14 again. runNativeApp itself needs another approach on 3.14, since NativeCallable.isolateGroupBound now requires --experimental-shared-data.

Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
170
Forks
15
Avg merge
58m
Merged PRs (30d)
1

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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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