Deprecation and Removal of Support for Older Dart SDK Versions

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Kevin Chisholm

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Sep 13, 2024, 4:49:02 PMSep 13
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Hello Flutter and Dart Community,


I am reaching out to inform you of a significant update regarding the support for older Dart SDK versions in our development ecosystem. This change is part of our ongoing effort to improve performance, reliability, and the overall developer experience.

Background and Context

As the Dart and Flutter plugins for VSCode and IntelliJ have evolved, supporting a wide range of Dart SDK versions has become increasingly challenging. Maintaining compatibility with older versions introduces complexity, affects performance, and diverts resources from developing new features and enhancements.


Our data shows that the number of affected users is less than 1%. Given this minimal usage, we believe it is timely and beneficial to streamline our support to focus on more recent versions.

Deprecation with Dart 3.6

Starting with the release of Dart 3.6, we will deprecate support for Dart SDK versions older than 3.0 (Released in May 2023). This means that while the tools may still function with older SDKs, we will no longer provide official support or fixes for any issues specific to these versions.


Key Points:

  • Deprecation Begins with the Dart 3.6 release

  • We will only support Dart SDK 3.0 and above (Which corresponds to Dart Language Versions 2.12 and above)

  • Users on older SDKs are encouraged to upgrade to continue receiving support and updates.

Removal in Dart 3.6

With the subsequent Dart 3.7 release (Estimated release: Q1 2025), we will begin removing support for Dart SDK versions older than 3.0. This means that future releases may no longer be compatible with these versions, and we will not address any related issues.


Key Points:

  • Users must upgrade to Dart SDK 3.0(Flutter 3.10) or later to use the latest tools.

Conclusion

We believe this change will enable us to focus on delivering high-quality features and improvements that enhance the overall development experience for the majority of our users. We appreciate your understanding and cooperation during this transition.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out through our support channels.


Thank you for your continued support.

Kevin Chisholm on behalf of the Dart and Flutter Team at Google


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