dnys1 / embedded_dart

An attempt to embed Dart code as a shared library

Embedded Dart

A very naive attempt at embedding precompiled AOT Dart code in a shared library.

Why?

Dart is an incredibly powerful and versatile language which many developers love. Why should its benefits be limited to those writing Dart or Flutter applications? Embedding Dart code in a shared library would enable the use of Dart anywhere and further help solidify its place as the go-to language for cross-platform development! Write once, run anywhere - that's the dream!

There are lots of existing requests in the Dart SDK to provide examples of embedding the Dart VM:

• dart-lang/sdk#43984
• dart-lang/sdk#37527
• dart-lang/sdk#44604

We hope this repo serves to fill in the blanks for these curious folks.

Prior Art

Slava Egorov, a Dart core maintainer has provided some examples of embedding Dart as a JIT compiler here.

Likewise, there have been some community efforts at doing the same:

• https://github.com/fuzzybinary/dart_shared_libray
• https://gist.github.com/chancila/f0b4e1b37f44fa780427711e286abdad

Running

NOTE: The code in this repo is not working yet. Any help in getting it running is appreciated!

Make sure you have a local clone of the Dart SDK and have built it using the command (replacing arm64 with your current architecture, if necessary):

See the Dart team's Building the SDK wiki for more details.

./tools/build.py --no-goma --mode release --arch arm64 create_sdk

And update the DART_SDK_ROOT and DART_SDK_OUT variables in EmbeddedDart/CMakeLists.txt as necessary.

Create an AOT snapshot of the main entrypoint:

dart compile aot-snapshot bin/embedded_dart.dart

And update the path to the AOT ELF in EmbeddedDart/main.cpp:22.

Finally, build & run the C++ project located in EmbeddedDart/.