Google has moved Dart to GitHub including the entire SDK, the VM, dart2js and various libraries.

Dart is Google's alternative to JavaScript and has attracted a lot of interest from developers since it was introduced in 2011. When Dart was originally proposed as a language for structured web programming we wondered whether this could be a JavaScript killer but what has emerged over the years hasn't lived up to this, despite having Google behind it. 

The project has seen a lot of activity and by Dart 1.9, released at the end of March, which introduced the await and async approach asynchronous programming which gave it an advantage over JavaScript. However as these facilities are included in ECMAScript 2016 so this only temporary.

The move to GitHub has already taken place and in the announcement made on Dart News, Seth Ladd sees it as a positive step for the community, saying:

We hope our move to GitHub helps more Dartisans become active participants in the future of Dart.

While the Dart VM still has a future it isn't quite what was originally envisaged. In March Google backtracked on its plan to integrate the Dart VM into Chrome. Instead Dart will be compiled to JavaScript and not run as Dart in any browser, not even Google's. 

Another part of the project  to be curtailed affects the developer tools. At the end of April Seth Ladd broke the news:

We are retiring Dart Editor at the Dart 1.11 release. WebStorm is the preferred IDE experience for Dart, and the Eclipse plugin for Dart will continue to be supported.

Now an announcement on its Google+ circle reveals that:

 we’ve decided to stop our active investment in Chrome Dev Editor and we don’t plan on further development. 

However, for those who are disappointed one commentator points out:

Its an open source project on GitHub and it lives. Fork long and prosper!

Frequently we've seen Google devote lots of resources to projects only to abandon them. At least these are on GitHub and so there is hope of an afterlife without Google. 

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