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Google has been very busy these days. Besides their core algorithm update that was confirmed on May 4, the search giant updated its popular programming language Dart to version 2.8 along with Flutter, which has been updated to version 1.7.
The two releases come as an aftermath of Google’s announcement last month which unveiled that it would align Dart and Flutter release processes and channels.
Performance and memory improvements
Developers building their apps with Flutter will notice significant performance and memory improvements, after they upgrade to version 1.17. Additionally, developers should also see up to 40% reduction in CPU and GPU usage for simple iOS animations.
“Our goal is to ship stable releases on a roughly quarterly cadence. However, this release took a little longer because we’ve been retooling our infrastructure for a new release process. We believe that the new release model will improve our ability to service the stable branch with quality hotfixes,” said Chris Sells, Google’s Product Manager.
“Flutter brings with it the promise of solving a problem that our industry has wrestled with for decades. How can you build great apps from a single source code base across multiple platforms? With all of the power and capability that Flutter provides, we think we’re on a good path to answer that question,” added Mr. Sells.
Flutter promises a 70% reduction in memory when scrolling quickly through large images.
Metal for iOS apps
Metal is Apple’s low-level graphics API that provides almost direct access to the underlying GPU of iOS devices. This release uses Apple’s Metal API for accessing an iOS device’s GPU by default instead of OpenGL, resulting in faster Flutter apps on the iPad and iPhones supporting Metal. It is important to note that on iOS devices that run iOS version older than iOS10 (or those with processors below the A7 chip), Flutter continues to use OpenGL.
Material widgets
Google has updated its Material widgets with a new NavigationRail for responsive applications, and an updated DatePicker. There is also updated text theming, which in combination with support for Google Fonts gives developers an easy way to get a wide array of fonts and text styles while following the Material Design guidelines.
The Dart SDK 2.8 features
Dart is the programming language used for building apps in Flutter.
Dart 2.8 is not considered a huge update. The team behind this popular programming language is working on a key feature called null safety, but the work is not yet complete. Dart 2.8 uses the new command ‘pub outdated’ to ensure package dependencies are kept up to date. This feature allows the Dart SDK to enable dependency version discovery.
In addition, the team succeeded to make pub run notably faster by downloading multiple packages simultaneously. With the latest 2.8 version, improvements to the pub client tool were made, which is used to manage packages downloaded from the pub.dev package repository.
How to update
The only thing left to clarify is the following – “How to update”?
The Dart SDK is available from the Dart website, while Flutter is available from the Flutter website. It is important to emphasize that those using Flutter through an IDE such as Android Studio or Visual Studio Code, can start using the new versions using those product’s tools.
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