Dart Package Maintenance

Dart Package Maintenance

Guidelines for maintaining Dart packages in alignment with Dart team best practices.

Discovery

To find maintenance tasks or inconsistencies:

Consistency Checks

Ensure the latest version in CHANGELOG.md matches pubspec.yaml:

• Compare the top header in CHANGELOG.md with the version: field in pubspec.yaml.

Versioning

Semantic Versioning

• Major: Breaking changes.
• Minor: New features (non-breaking API changes).
• Patch: Bug fixes, documentation, or non-impacting changes.
• Unstable packages: Use 0.major.minor+patch.
• Recommendation: Aim for 1.0.0 as soon as the package is stable.

Pre-Edit Verification

• Check Published Versions: Before modifying CHANGELOG.md or pubspec.yaml, ALWAYS check the currently released version (e.g., via git tag or pub.dev).

• Do Not Amend Released Versions: Never add new entries to a version header that corresponds to a released tag.

• Increment for New Changes: If the current version in pubspec.yaml matches a released tag, increment the version (e.g., usually to -wip) and create a new section in CHANGELOG.md.

  • Consistency: The CHANGELOG.md header must match the new pubspec.yaml version.

  • SemVer Guidelines:

    • Breaking Changes: Bump Major, reset Minor/​Patch (e.g., 2.0.0-wip, 0.5.0-wip).
    • New Features: Bump Minor, reset Patch (e.g., 1.1.0-wip, 0.4.5-wip).
    • Bug Fixes: Bump Patch (e.g., 1.0.1-wip).

Changelog Content

• Focus on User Impact: Entries in CHANGELOG.md should focus on changes visible to or impacting the end-user (e.g., new features, bug fixes, breaking changes).
• Omit Internal Changes: Do not include internal refactorings, test changes, or other modifications that do not affect the package's behavior or API for the user.

Work-in-Progress (WIP) Versions

• Immediately after a publish, or on the first change after a publish, update pubspec.yaml and CHANGELOG.md with a -wip suffix (e.g., 1.1.0-wip).
• This indicates the current state is not yet published.

Breaking Changes

• Evaluate the impact on dependent packages and internal projects.
• Consider running changes through internal presubmits if possible.
• Prefer incremental rollouts (e.g., new behavior as opt-in) to minimize downstream breakage.

Publishing Process

1. Preparation: Remove the -wip suffix from pubspec.yaml and CHANGELOG.md in a dedicated pull request.
2. Execution: Run dart pub publish (or flutter pub publish) and resolve all warnings and errors.
3. Tagging: Create and push a git tag for the published version:
   • For single-package repos: v1.2.3
   • For monorepos: package_name-v1.2.3
   • Example: git tag v1.2.3 && git push --tags

Pull Request Management

• Commits: Each PR should generally correspond to a single squashed commit upon merging.
• Shared History: Once a PR is open, avoid force pushing to the branch.
• Conflict Resolution: Prefer merging main into the PR branch rather than rebasing to resolve conflicts. This preserves the review history and comments.
• Reviewing: Add comments from the "Files changed" view to batch them.
• Local Inspection: Use gh pr checkout <number> to inspect changes locally in your IDE.