"DART_SDK" environment variable is officially removed?

Question

I remember DART_SDK was necessary. but now I am not able to find any document about DART_SDK.

When do we need to set DART_SDK ? I think there's no need in normal cases.

Answer 1

Some scripts needed a way to find the SDK and for this usually this environment variable was used. But as far as I have seen most code went away from this way of finding the SDK directory (see for example http://dartbug.com/17349, http://dartbug.com/16994, http://dartbug.com/15019 (fixed), http://dartbug.com/10444)

Answer 2

It depends on the tools you're using.

For example, I made DartVS use this variable to locate the SDK for the Analzyer (I saw it was already being used, so decided to piggy-back on it!).

In the next version, we will automatically download and unzip the SDK if this variable isn't set (so it won't be needed); however support for it still remains so you're able to change/override the SDK being used (eg. if you want to use dev channel versions, or go back to an old version).

(If you keep your SDK in the same place, then there shouldn't be any maintenance in keeping this set/valid. The Chocolatey package keeps the path the same across upgrades to aid this :))