Recent documentation about Dart Isolates

Question

I recently started with Dart (www.dartlang.org) and really like it so far. A very promising feature are isolates, but I am not sure on how to start.

The documentation I found so far is from before a breaking change (BREAKING CHANGE: dart:isolate) in October 2013. The information in this "Breaking change" email is quite complicated and it looks like the new api is more complicated than the old.

I've got some questions:

• Is the dart:isolate api stable?
• Is there any up-to-date documentation?
• Are there any working examples?

Thanks for any help, Hendrik Jan

Answer 1

I tried this example and it works https://gist.github.com/olostan/7883315

import "dart:isolate";

void main() {
  print("Starting");
  var sPort = new ReceivePort();
  SendPort rPort;
  sPort.listen((msg) {
    if (msg is SendPort) {
      print("Host got port. sending back");
      rPort = msg;
      rPort.send("Hello!");
    }
    else print("Host got $msg");
    rPort.send(null);
    sPort.close();
  });
  Isolate.spawn(test,sPort.sendPort);
}
void test(sender) {
  var rPort = new ReceivePort();
  sender.send(rPort.sendPort);
  rPort.listen((msg){
    print("Worker got $msg");
    if (msg!=null)
      sender.send("I am worker");
    else rPort.close();
  });
}

Isolates seem not to be used too much yet so there may still be some bugs.
The latest problems I remember reading about was debugging code running in isolates. I don't know if this is solved yet.
It also depends if you want to use isolates on the server or in the browser.
AFAIK it's more stable in the VM.