Building Overview

Overview of building the Dart SDK from source

The Dart SDK can be built from source for various platforms and architectures. This section provides comprehensive guides for building the SDK for your target platform.

You must follow the instructions for getting the source code before attempting to build. Just cloning a GitHub repo or downloading and unpacking a ZIP of the SDK repository will not work.

What You’ll Need

Before building the Dart SDK, ensure you have:

• Python 3 installed on your system
• Chromium’s depot_tools installed and in your PATH
• Platform-specific build tools (see Dependencies)
• The complete Dart source tree (not just a git clone)

Build Process Overview

Building the Dart SDK involves these general steps:

1. Install dependencies

   Set up platform-specific build tools, Python 3, and depot_tools.

2. Get the source

   Use fetch dart to download the complete source tree with all dependencies.

3. Build the SDK

   Run the build script with your target configuration (architecture, mode, platform).

4. Test the build

   Verify your build works correctly using the test suite.

Basic Build Command

The most common build command creates a release SDK for your platform:

cd sdk
./tools/build.py --mode release create_sdk

Build Output Locations

The build output location varies by platform:

• Linux: out/ReleaseX64/dart-sdk
• Windows: out/ReleaseX64/dart-sdk
• macOS: xcodebuild/ReleaseARM64/dart-sdk

Common Build Options

Architecture

Specify the target architecture with --arch or -a:

./tools/build.py --arch=arm64 create_sdk
./tools/build.py -a x64 create_sdk

Supported architectures: x64, arm, arm64, riscv64

Build Mode

Choose between debug and release modes with --mode or -m:

./tools/build.py --mode=release create_sdk  # Optimized build
./tools/build.py --mode=debug create_sdk    # Debug symbols
./tools/build.py --mode=all create_sdk      # Both modes

Build Targets

• create_sdk - Full Dart SDK (most common)
• runtime - Standalone VM only (faster build)
• most - Most build targets (for testing)

Platform-Specific Guides

For detailed platform-specific instructions, see:

• Building for ARM and RISC-V
• Building for Android
• Building for Fuchsia

Build Performance Tips

Local File System

We recommend using a local file system for build output. If your code is on NFS, link the output directory locally:

cd sdk/
mkdir -p /usr/local/dart-out/
ln -s -f /usr/local/dart-out/ out

Build Notifications

On Mac and Linux, you can get a notification when long builds complete:

export DART_BUILD_NOTIFICATION_DELAY=60  # Notify if build takes >60s

Next Steps

Dependencies

Install required build dependencies

Build from Source

Complete step-by-step build instructions

ARM/RISC-V

Build for ARM and RISC-V processors

Android

Build the Dart VM for Android