Difference between the `dart-lang/homebrew-dart/dart` formula and `dart-sdk`?

[bartekpacia]

Basically the title.

There is the dart-sdk formula in homebrew-core. Why would one use formulas from this tap?

I'm curious to hear from the Dart maintainers themselves.

[tolotrasamuel]

I would like to know the difference too

[athomas]

The homebrew-core formula attempts to recreate Dart builds from source which is more in the spirit of homebrew. I write "attempts" because the Dart build uses pre-built artifacts and the homebrew-core formula doesn't actually build all of them from sources.

The dart formula here ships the same bits that we ship on all other release channels (it downloads the same zip files). This is what our CI is testing and providing. So that is our recommended solution. We're not testing what's in homebrew-core but it probably works well enough for the people that made the dart-sdk formula.

It would be nice if the two were merged at some point, but we're unlikely to invest in that in the foreseeable future. What would need to be done for this is to modify the Dart SDK build to allow a true "from sources only" build (non-trivial, please don't underestimate the amount of work), and to setup a CI infrastructure to ensure it doesn't break.