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Contributing

This SDK is generated from the Sky repository using deploy_sdk.py. Static files (including this README.md) are located under sky/sdk.

Pull requests and issue reports are gladly accepted at the Sky repository!

Sky

Sky is an experimental, high-performance UI framework for mobile apps. Sky helps you create apps with beautiful user interfaces and high-quality interactive design that run smoothly at 120 Hz.

Sky consists of two components:

  1. The Sky engine. The engine is the core of the system. Written in C++, the engine provides the muscle of the Sky system. The engine provides several primitives, including a soft real-time scheduler and a hierarchical, retained-mode graphics system, that let you build high-quality apps.

  2. The Sky framework. The framework makes it easy to build apps using Sky by providing familiar user interface widgets, such as buttons, infinite lists, and animations, on top of the engine using Dart. These extensible components follow a functional programming style inspired by React.

We're still iterating on Sky heavily, which means the framework and underlying engine are both likely to change in incompatible ways several times, but if you're interested in trying out the system, this document can help you get started.

Examples

Sky uses Dart and Sky applications are Dart Packages. Application creation starts by creating a new directory and adding a pubspec.yaml:

pubspec.yaml for your app:

name: your_app_name
dependencies:
  sky: any

Once the pubspec is in place, create a lib directory (where your dart code will go), ensure that the 'dart' and 'pub' executables are on your $PATH and run the following:

pub get && pub run sky:init.

Currently the Sky Engine assumes the entry point for your application is a main function in a Dart file inside your package:

import 'package:sky/widgets/basic.dart';

class HelloWorldApp extends App {
  Widget build() {
    return new Text('Hello, world!');
  }
}

void main() {
  runApp(new HelloWorldApp());
}

Execution starts in main, which instructs the framework to run a new instance of the HelloWorldApp. The framework then calls the build() function on HelloWorldApp to create a tree of widgets, some of which might be other Components, which in turn have build() functions that generate more widgets iteratively to create the widget hierarchy.

Later, if a Component changes state, the framework calls that component's build() function again to create a new widget tree. The framework diffs the new widget tree against the old widget tree and any differences are applyed to the underlying render tree.

Services

Sky apps can access services from the host operating system using Mojo IPC. For example, you can access the network using the network_service.mojom interface. Although you can use these low-level interfaces directly, you might prefer to access these services via libraries in the framework. For example, the fetch.dart library wraps the underlying network_service.mojom in an ergonomic interface:

import 'package:sky/mojo/net/fetch.dart';

main() async {
  Response response = await fetchBody('example.txt');
  print(response.bodyAsString());
}

Set up your computer

  1. Install the Dart SDK:
  1. Install the adb tool from the Android SDK:
  1. Ensure that $DART_SDK is set to the path of your Dart SDK and adb (inside platform-tools in the android sdk) is in your $PATH.

Set up your device

Currently Sky requires an Android device running the Lollipop (or newer) version of the Android operating system.

  1. Enable developer mode on your device by visiting Settings > About phone and tapping the Build number field five times.

  2. Enable USB debugging in Settings > Developer options.

  3. Using a USB cable, plug your phone into your computer. If prompted on your device, authorize your computer to access your device.

Running a Sky application

The sky pub package includes a sky_tool script to assist in running Sky applications inside the SkyDemo.apk harness. The sky_tool script expects to be run from the root directory of your application pub package. To run one of the examples in this SDK, try:

  1. cd example/stocks

  2. pub get to set up a copy of the sky package in the app directory.

  3. ./packages/sky/sky_tool start to start the dev server and upload your app to the device. (NOTE: add a --install flag to install SkyDemo.apk if it is not already installed on the device.)

  4. Use adb logcat to view any errors or Dart print() output from the app. adb logcat -s sky can be used to filter only adb messages from SkyDemo.apk.

Measuring Performance

Sky has support for generating trace files compatible with Chrome's about:tracing.

packages/sky/sky_tool start_tracing and packages/sky/sky_tool stop_tracing are the commands to use.

Due to https://github.com/domokit/mojo/issues/127 tracing currently requires root access on the device.

Debugging

Sky uses Observatory for debugging and profiling. While running your Sky app using sky_tool, you can access Observatory by navigating your web browser to http://localhost:8181/.

Building a standalone MyApp

Although it is possible to bundle the Sky Engine in your own app (instead of running your code inside SkyDemo.apk), right now doing so is difficult.

There is one example of doing so if you're feeling brave: https://github.com/domokit/sky_engine/tree/master/sky/sdk/example/stocks

Eventually we plan to make this much easier and support platforms other than Android, but that work is yet in progress.

Adding Services to MyApp

Mojo IPC is an inter-process-communication system designed to provide cross-thread, cross-process, and language-agnostic communication between applications. Sky uses Mojo IPC to make it possible to write UI code in Dart and yet depend on networking code, etc. written in another language. Services are replicable, meaning that Dart code written to use the network_service remains portable to any platform (iOS, Android, etc.) by simply providing a 'natively' written network_service.

Embedders of the Sky Engine and consumers of the Sky Framework can use this same mechanism to expose not only existing services like the Keyboard service to allow Sky Framework Dart code to interface with the underlying platform's Keyboard, but also to expose any additional non-Dart business logic to Sky/Dart UI code.

As an example, SkyApplication exposes a mojo network_service (required by Sky Engine C++ code) SkyDemoApplication additionally exposes keyboard_service and sensor_service for use by the Sky Framework from Dart.