Unhelpful error message if you omit --sdkdir when using sdk: and Pub

[sethladd]

Pubspec.yaml:

dependencies:
  unittest:
    sdk: unittest

When run with:

pub install

Will generate:

~/tmp/pubsdk > pub install
Entry null is not a supported type.

It should say instead:

You specified that unittest is in the SDK, but you did not specify where to find the SDK. Use --sdkdir to specify the directory of the SDK and please try again.

[munificent]

The --sdkdir argument is a temporary hack right now. The integration tests for pub need to tell it where to find the (fake) SDK directory and until recently dart:io didn't have support for working with environment variables.

Now that it does, this argument will likely go away completely at some point. Until then... pretend it doesn't exist. :)

Leaving this bug open for now in case others run into this, but it will get closed out when --sdkdir is removed.

[sethladd]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the info. How does one use pub to pull in the unittest lib?

[munificent]

Right now, I don't think there is a good answer for that. What I'm hoping is that when pub.dartlang.org is up and running, we can put unittest there, but I admit I haven't had a chance to put a lot of thought into this yet.

[sethladd]

You might want to print out "I see you're using the sdk: source. This is a temporary hack, and will be removed. We suggest ..."

Bob, perhaps in the meantime you can support a file: source that will eventually be replaced by pub.dartlang.org. This keeps package: in the source and lets the developer use file: today and later, pub: or whatever it becomes.

[sethladd]

--sdkdir is now deprecated. Use environment variable DART_SDK

---

Added WontFix label.

[DartBot]

This issue has been moved to dart-lang/pub#53.