Dev News: Dart Frog Now Stable, Redwood Updates Bundler
Dart Frog, an open source framework that allows developers to leverage Dart on the backend, is now available as a stable release, Dart Frog 1.0.
The framework has been used in key projects such as Google’s generative AI card game I/O Flip, according to Very Good Ventures, the Flutter consulting firm that created the MIT-licensed Dart Frog.
New features included in this release are:
- Dart Frog daemon, which allows for better integration with third-party systems and plugins;
- A VS Code extension,
- File uploads,
- Wildcard routes, and
- Authentication support
“These features help bridge the gap for Dart and Flutter developers to enable maximum efficiency,” the company stated in its news release. “Dart Frog reduces the Dart learning curve for Flutter developers by building routes that feel very similar to creating a widget tree in Flutter, for example.”
The Dart programming language is used to develop applications for a variety of platforms, including web, mobile and desktop. It is a compiled language, which makes it fast and efficient. It can run on the server, generate a native executable or compile to JavaScript and machine code. Dart also forms the foundation of Flutter.
Developers can share code between the front and backend using Dart Frog, the company added. Also, Dart Frog can be configured with any cloud service. It’s available through its dedicated site or on GitHub.
Redwood Updates Bundler in Version 6.0.0
Redwood, a JavaScript-based full-stack framework, released version 6.0.0 last week, (somehow we missed it in last week’s Dev News). This update includes support for the bundler and build tool Vite 15, a refactor to its router to use Suspense 12, and a simpler logging experience. It also has been updated to add Prisma v5 and Storybook 7.0.
Redwood is designed to help developers manage the complexity of a startup’s application as it grows, Tom Preston-Warner told The New Stack last year. Preston-Warner, the founder and former CEO of GitHub, is one of the four founders and 300 contributors to the open source web development framework.
“In this major, we refactored Redwood’s router to use Suspense 12 under the hood,” software developer Dominic Saadi stated in the RedwoodJS blog. “This paves the way for streaming in a v6 minor or the next major, and React Server Components (RSC) in the next epoch.”
The version also simplifies the default logging, which Saadi acknowledged can be very verbose “out of the box.”
NextUI Version 2.0 Released
NextUI, a UI library for React, released version 2.0 Monday. The big news is this version transitions the tool from Stitches to Tailwind CSS, which creator Junior García said eliminated runtime styles and allows for a more flexible and customizable UI library.
By changing to TailwindCSS, NextUI v2.0 now supports React Server Components by default, which the release notes say will improve performance and allows developers to use it with the latest versions of React and Next.js without running into React Server Components issues.
The updated version also comes with a TailwindCSS plugin that enables the customization and addition of default themes. This plugin allows developers to customize colors and layouts tokens that are used by NextUI components.
Gradle Enterprise Adds Supports for Bazel, sbt/Scala
Gradle Inc. updated its enterprise solution recently, expanding the build systems it supports in Gradle Enterprise 2023.2.
Gradle is an open source build automation tool for the building, testing, and deployment of software. It’s written in Java, but can be used to build projects in Java, Kotlin, Scala and Groovy.
The new release provides general availability support for core Gradle Enterprise capabilities to Bazel, the open source build system created and used by Google. That support includes Build Scan, Build Cache, and Build Failure Analytics. It also provides a beta version of Gradle Enterprise Build Scan for sbt, which is the primary build system used by the Scala developer community.
Gradle Enterprise already supports Gradle Build Tool and Apache Maven.
