Win XP and Dart

[John Walker]

Hi
As pub is not supported on win xp should I rule xp out for doing any Dart development?
It looks like doing any non trivial work that requires references to other libraries is going to lead to a world of pain without it.
I gather from the other threads that pub support for xp isn't coming any time soon, is this correct?
Should I just create Ubuntu boot on my machine for working with Dart?
 thanks
John

[Dan Grove]

Hi John-

your assessment is correct. XP support is not on the roadmap.

Dan

John

--
Consider asking HOWTO questions at Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/dart
 
 

[John Walker]

Thanks Dan

[Jos Hirth]

Pub uses symlinks. XP's version of NTFS simply doesn't support that. Symlinks were introduced to NTFS with Vista.

[Vadim Tsushko]

I guess you may try to emulate mklink by lynkd from windows xp resource kit. 

http://www.pyeung.com/pages/microsoft/win2k/hardlinks.html

[mezoni]

Not prevent to bring back what was.

Buy every time a new Windows'ы expensive for us.

[Kai Sellgren]

On Friday, November 9, 2012 10:45:48 AM UTC+2, mezoni wrote:

Not prevent to bring back what was.

Buy every time a new Windows'ы expensive for us.

 

I'm not sure if I understood you right, but did you say that keeping your operating system up to date is too expensive for you? You do realize Windows XP is 12 years old! If you can't afford the upgrade cycle, consider free choices like Ubuntu.

Personally I find nothing wrong with leaving out XP even if there weren't problems.

[mezoni]

>> I'm not sure if I understood you right, but did you say that keeping your operating system up to date is too expensive for you? 

Not for me. But for others.

If in USA a minimal salary is $1500. $1500 / $70 = 4.7%

But in RF a minimal salary is $300 (officialy $148). $300 / $70 = 24%

24% / 4.7% = 510% more expensive for us

$70 * 510% = $378 you buy a basic version of Windows for so much?

For ordinary people, we have it is worth more than 5.1 times than for you.

Officially one million people receive this salary.

This is life, dear.

[mezoni]

Officially one million people receive this salary ($148).

Not $300.

It will cost 10 times as much for them.

[Ahmet A. Akın]

Then go with the free path. it is cheaper.

[Dirk Detering]

Am 09.11.2012 11:39 schrieb "Kai Sellgren" <kaise...@gmail.com>:
> I'm not sure if I understood you right, but did you say that keeping your operating system up to date is too expensive for you? You do realize Windows XP is 12 years old! If you can't afford the upgrade cycle, consider free choices like Ubuntu.

I think this argument misses the situation a bit.
XP's origin may be 12 years ago, but it got some sort of rebirth with the upcoming of netbooks which couldn't be run with win7 some 5 to 6 years ago, and are still in use.
Considering Dart a scripting language resp. a browser language, it is not so unimportant that it runs in evironments where any other scripting language can, resp. where browsers are in use.

Ubuntu is not necessarily an option here for every one (consumer) or for every hardware (old netbook).

So this means not only updating the OS but the hardware too.

(Just for consideration, I don't think it is a topic against Dart in its current state)

[Matthew Butler]

On Friday, November 9, 2012 2:24:00 PM UTC-4, Dirk Detering wrote:

Am 09.11.2012 11:39 schrieb "Kai Sellgren" <kaise...@gmail.com>:
> I'm not sure if I understood you right, but did you say that keeping your operating system up to date is too expensive for you? You do realize Windows XP is 12 years old! If you can't afford the upgrade cycle, consider free choices like Ubuntu.

I think this argument misses the situation a bit.
XP's origin may be 12 years ago, but it got some sort of rebirth with the upcoming of netbooks which couldn't be run with win7 some 5 to 6 years ago, and are still in use.

I'm not sure why anyone would run Windows XP on a netbook when there are vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 netbook versions. Also there are free Ubuntu (or other distro versions) designed for netbooks.

But all of that is irrelevant as a netbook does not make for a good development environment.

 

Considering Dart a scripting language resp. a browser language, it is not so unimportant that it runs in evironments where any other scripting language can, resp. where browsers are in use.

If you have an up-to-date browser on XP (ie Chrome or Firefox, I don't believe you can update to IE 9/10 on XP? but not sure), then you can run the scripts fine. 

 

Ubuntu is not necessarily an option here for every one (consumer) or for every hardware (old netbook).

So this means not only updating the OS but the hardware too.

(Just for consideration, I don't think it is a topic against Dart in its current state)

It's true you can't run the VM on XP, or more particularly you cannot use Pub on XP, this primarily affects development as opposed running a browser that can run javascript compiled dart apps. 

Microsoft has already terminated 'mainstream' support of XP.  You can only get continued support as a paid commercial customer. So if Microsoft won't even support their product, how can you say that Google should support their products on that platform?

Matt

[Bob Nystrom]

On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Dirk Detering <mail...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Am 09.11.2012 11:39 schrieb "Kai Sellgren" <kaise...@gmail.com>:

> I'm not sure if I understood you right, but did you say that keeping your operating system up to date is too expensive for you? You do realize Windows XP is 12 years old! If you can't afford the upgrade cycle, consider free choices like Ubuntu.

I think this argument misses the situation a bit.
XP's origin may be 12 years ago, but it got some sort of rebirth with the upcoming of netbooks which couldn't be run with win7 some 5 to 6 years ago, and are still in use.
Considering Dart a scripting language resp. a browser language, it is not so unimportant that it runs in evironments where any other scripting language can, resp. where browsers are in use.

Pub is only required for Dart developers. Dart end users don't depend on pub at all. A Dart web app developed using pub should run just fine on a browser sitting on top of XP, as long as the Dart supports that browser.

Cheers,

- bob

[mezoni]

>> Pub is only required for Dart developers. Dart end users don't depend on pub at all.

Bob, do not underestimate the importance of pub.

What about the standalone client-side applications?

This is not the arguments for an any version of Operating System.

This is arguments that the pub needs to continue to improve.

To make it clear and easy for everyone.

For developers, administrators, and just power users.

Also if is possible to pay more attention to the implementation of which relates exclusively to the work on the client-side (Standalone VM).

[Mike]

It would be nice to have XP as a development environment option involving Pub, but I understand if the Dart team have decided against it - can't have everything! However I would like to point out that just because XP is 12 years old doesn't make it a bad OS. I use it at work and still prefer it to the Vista ultimate I have at home. As programmers we would all like our program's to be liked and used in 12 years time!

[John Walker]

I agree - I want to do Dart development on XP and that is folly without pub. Then again I want reflection and I want traits and I want widget libraries and I want *,*  ............... That said I think XP punches above its age / weight as an OS. Since XP there has been Vista - I'm not that crazy, Win7 - no need to change and now there is Windows 8 - I don't want to turn my four year old laptop into a phone emulator then spend a week reinstalling all my software. So until other tools such as IntelliJ, eclipse and webstorm and sbt stop working I'll be sticking with XP and parking my Dart journey until / if I get around to creating a Ubuntu partition. Looking at the number of up votes on this issue it looks like intersection between wannabe Dartoligists and the I'll-give-up -XP-when-you-pry-it-from-my-cold-dead-hands crew is a pretty exclusive set. This could well reflect / mirror that it's low priority is correct :-(.

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 8:19 AM, Mike <michael.s...@gmail.com> wrote:

It would be nice to have XP as a development environment option involving Pub, but I understand if the Dart team have decided against it - can't have everything!  However I would like to point out that just because XP is 12 years old doesn't make it a bad OS.  I use it at work and still prefer it to the Vista ultimate I have at home.  As programmers we would all like our program's to be liked and used in 12 years time!

[Ahmet A. Akın]

On Saturday, November 10, 2012 1:42:29 AM UTC+2, John Walker wrote:

I agree - I want to do Dart development on XP and that is folly without pub. Then again I want reflection and I want traits and I want widget libraries and I want *,*  ............... That said I think XP punches above its age / weight as an OS. Since XP there has been Vista - I'm not that crazy, Win7 - no need to change and now there is Windows 8 - I don't want to turn my four year old laptop into a phone emulator then spend a week reinstalling all my software. So until other tools such as IntelliJ, eclipse and webstorm and sbt stop working I'll be sticking with XP and parking my Dart journey until / if I get around to creating a Ubuntu partition. Looking at the number of up votes on this issue it looks like intersection between wannabe Dartoligists and the I'll-give-up -XP-when-you-pry-it-from-my-cold-dead-hands crew is a pretty exclusive set. This could well reflect / mirror that it's low priority is correct :-(.

If you have 3 or 4G total memory you can use VirtualBox and install a lightweight linux distro. IMHO it is a better solution than double booting. My wife has a 4 year old laptop and she uses ubuntu as primary os and windows in virtualization if she needs it. 

My personal opinion on the subject, I think there are very few developers actually using XP as their OS and Dart team should not put valuable resources to that. For now focusing on browser-client and server vm is essential. 

[Don Olmstead]

I honestly think supporting XP is just madness considering its now 3 versions behind the latest Windows release. That being said if I still think it would be useful for pub having something like a deploy option that would just drag down the requested packages to the package directory without all the symbolic link stuff so you could just copy over to a web server when you're ready to deploy. This would be probably fit the use case of XP developers.

A bug exists at http://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/detail?id=6006 which has been triaged that might fit the bill.

[John Walker]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 11:04 AM, Don Olmstead <don.j.o...@gmail.com> wrote:

I honestly think supporting XP is just madness considering its now 3 versions behind the latest Windows release.

 I honestly think u r probably right :-)

That being said if I still think it would be useful for pub having something like a deploy option that would just drag down the requested packages to the package directory without all the symbolic link stuff so you could just copy over to a web server when you're ready to deploy. This would be probably fit the use case of XP developers.

A bug exists at http://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/detail?id=6006 which has been triaged that might fit the bill.

Looks like a good idea I think very well might.

[John Walker]

thanks for the tip Ahmet I'll give virtual Box a whirl..

[wstrange]

On Friday, November 9, 2012 5:04:05 PM UTC-7, Don Olmstead wrote:

I honestly think supporting XP is just madness considering its now 3 versions behind the latest Windows release.

+1

I see a lot of "Dart needs feature X" requests on this group.  Everything has a cost - something we all need to keep in mind when asking (or demanding as the case may be) a new feature.

Please let the Dart team focus on the stuff that really matters.

[Dirk Detering]

Answers below, but just to clarify: As a netbook I use a 4GB RAM doublecore 320 GB running Ubuntu now, but it only replaced my 1GB RAM 16GB Dell mini9 two weeks ago, and that is now still in use by someone else.

Am 09.11.2012 19:47 schrieb "Matthew Butler" <butler....@gmail.com>:
> I'm not sure why anyone would run Windows XP on a netbook when there are vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 netbook versions. Also there are free Ubuntu (or other distro versions) designed for netbooks.
>

Vista will never come on any of my machines. Ubuntu, as I already stated, is not for everyone, and especially not for every hardware, despite the remix. XP was preinstalled, Win7 was not usable on above mentioned device/resources.

> But all of that is irrelevant as a netbook does not make for a good development environment.
>  

Till two weeks ago I successfully used said Dell mini to do scripting development (Python, Ruby, nodejs) and even some Scala/Java development (sketching/prototyping) on my daily train travel (incl. git-bash, netbeans, libreoffice, browser)
Not the same as a developer laptop, but quite usable for that mentioned purpose.

> Microsoft has already terminated 'mainstream' support of XP.  You can only get continued support as a paid commercial customer.

This is only partially true, as indeed I continue to get updates for XP. It is only that the fixes are reduced to high priority stuff.

>So if Microsoft won't even support their product, how can you say that Google should support their products on that platform?
>

Because it seems that any other concurrent product in this space runs there. Therefore I could presume that Dart does too, and that seems the case, except for pub, as we learned.
And even here I could say: npm does, maven does, sbt does...

BUT: I did indeed not want to settle a demand for XP support, I only contradicted the notion of "12 years old" and "dead".
We all know how wrong that kind of thinking was for IE6 for such along time (unfortunately).

KR
Det

[Emilio Platzer]

I am Argentine. In my country WinXP is installed and used in a lot of little companies, meddium government offices, and most public schools. ¿What do you do with an old computer (with 1 or 2 MB of RAM)? You can throw it away or you can put in other place and be productive (specially if your budget don't includes all employees or students). I supous is a ecological issue. WinXP support is caring for the planet. 

I propuse an automatic survey. Look at http_user_agents. Count how many Windows NT 5.1 you have now in dartlang.org of actual developers interesed in Dart.

pascal, C++ and now Dart. Dart can be revolutionary becouse it courage and the quality of the design. I'm sure that Dart will be an excellent option to develop and deploy (but depends of external factors like the inclusion in the standard installation of apache server or other acceptances tests). 

I'm sure too that Dart is an excellent option to teach a wide themes of programming from beginers to specialties. I'm was university profesor in Buenos Aires University (http://www.dc.uba.ar/), I teach in that university for 20 years. But here we depends for other external factors: WinXP support could be one. 

"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/536.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/20.0.1132.47 Safari/536.11"

--

[Bernhard Pichler]

Are the symlinks the only problem that prevents pub to run on XP?

This is a little bit of topic but i wonder if it wouldn't be better to store the packages as "physical" files and folders to the "packages" folder next to the "pubspec.yaml". We wouldn't have a cache for packages and we wouldn't create symlinks in _every_ folder of the application (which is a little bit annoying anyway). Just the one "packages" folder in the root of the application - we only need a rule how the Dart Editor, the dart2js compiler and the DartVM knows where to search for the packages. This is more or less the way how NuGet works in Visual Studio.

[Kevin Kellogg]

On Saturday, November 10, 2012 12:27:00 PM UTC-5, Bernhard Pichler wrote:

Are the symlinks the only problem that prevents pub to run on XP?

Someone interested in this could start by editing `createSymlink` here:

https://github.com/dart-lang/bleeding_edge/blob/master/dart/utils/pub/io.dart

Do a copy instead of symlink and go from there but I think that might cover it. It would take just a minute to find out if there are any obvious problems.

Kevin

[Bob Nystrom]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 9:27 AM, Bernhard Pichler <bernhard.ro...@gmail.com> wrote:

Are the symlinks the only problem that prevents pub to run on XP?

It's the only problem I know of offhand. But we've never tried to test Dart or pub on XP (as far as I know) so there may be other issues as well.

 

This is a little bit of topic but i wonder if it wouldn't be better to store the packages as "physical" files and folders to the "packages" folder next to the "pubspec.yaml".

We could do that, and at some point, Pub likely will support that for the "deploy" scenario where you want all of your dependencies confined to a single root directory.

 

We wouldn't have a cache for packages and we wouldn't create symlinks in _every_ folder of the application (which is a little bit annoying anyway).

We still have to litter your package with "packages" directories inside the subdirectories though. Or, at least, in every directory that contains a Dart entrypoint. This is required so that "package:" URLs resolve to a path that works. To do anything different here would require either:

1. Changing the language specification. So far, our language designers have been very reticent to make any changes here, and it isn't clear what a better solution would look like anyway.

2. A more intrusive development model like running a local server whose job it is to replace import URLs on the fly.

Compared to other languages, Dart's import system is quite rigid and static. We don't have anything like monkey-patching "require" in Ruby, or meta-import hooks in Python, or a "require" function in JS that returns a module as an object. Needing to support both running in a browser and whole-program compilation makes things much harder for us.

 

Just the one "packages" folder in the root of the application - we only need a rule how the Dart Editor, the dart2js compiler and the DartVM knows where to search for the packages. This is more or less the way how NuGet works in Visual Studio.

There's still one missing bit: self-links. In addition to all of your dependencies, your app's "packages" directory also gets a symlink that points to its own "lib" directory. We could, I suppose copy that stuff in there too, but that means you'd need to invoke pub every time you added a new file to your app. There are also some nasty canonicalization problems that this rubs dangerously close to.

Cheers,

- bob

On Friday, November 9, 2012 7:58:01 PM UTC+1, Bob Nystrom wrote:

On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Dirk Detering <mail...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Am 09.11.2012 11:39 schrieb "Kai Sellgren" <kaise...@gmail.com>:

> I'm not sure if I understood you right, but did you say that keeping your operating system up to date is too expensive for you? You do realize Windows XP is 12 years old! If you can't afford the upgrade cycle, consider free choices like Ubuntu.

I think this argument misses the situation a bit.
XP's origin may be 12 years ago, but it got some sort of rebirth with the upcoming of netbooks which couldn't be run with win7 some 5 to 6 years ago, and are still in use.
Considering Dart a scripting language resp. a browser language, it is not so unimportant that it runs in evironments where any other scripting language can, resp. where browsers are in use.

Pub is only required for Dart developers. Dart end users don't depend on pub at all. A Dart web app developed using pub should run just fine on a browser sitting on top of XP, as long as the Dart supports that browser.

Cheers,

- bob

--