Activating a dart app with pub global activate

Question

I created a new Dart app like this:

dart create hello

I can run the app like this:

dart run hello/bin/hello.dart

I try to activate the app like this:

dart pub global activate --source path hello

But I can't run the file like I would expect:

hello

zsh: command not found: hello

The .pub-cache/bin folder is in my cache but pub global activate didn't put it there.

This does work:

dart pub global run hello

Hello world!

But I'd like to be able to run the script without typing dart pub global run every time.

If I do a package from pub.dev it works ok:

dart pub global activate webdev

It puts a webdev executable inside the .pub-cache/bin folder and I can run it.

webdev --version

2.7.4

So is there another step I need to do to make my hello app get into the executable folder?

I also tried compiling it:

dart compile exe hello/bin/hello.dart

And activating it again:

dart pub global activate --source path hello

But there is still no binary in the .pub-cache/bin folder. Any suggestions?

Update

After getting Kevin's answer below, I added the following to pubspec.yaml:

executables:
  hello:

Then I ran the following command:

dart pub global activate --source path hello

which gave the following result (username modified):

Resolving dependencies... 
Got dependencies!
Package hello is currently active at path "/Users/suragch/Dev/DartProjects/hello".
Installed executable hello.
Activated hello 1.0.0 at path "/Users/suragch/Dev/DartProjects/hello".

But if I run this:

hello

I get the following error:

/Users/suragch/.pub-cache/bin/hello: line 7: pub: command not found

Running this still works, though:

dart pub global run hello

Hello world!

user_7238651 · Answer

You need to list the files under bin/ that you want to be executable in the executables section in pubspec.yaml file. For example for bin/hello.dart to be executable add the following to pubspec.yaml

....
executables:
  hello:

....

Then when you run: dart pub global activate --source path hello

You can now call hello in bin/ without running: pub global run hello

Again

You have to list every executables you intend to be made available to the user of your package in the CLI under the executables key in pubspec.yaml

user_3681880 · Answer

So it looks like this problem was caused because because of a bug as a result of switching from pub to dart pub. If you open the .pub-cache/bin/hello file with an editor, you'll see the following:

#!/usr/bin/env sh
# This file was created by pub v2.13.1.
# Package: hello
# Version: 1.0.0
# Executable: hello
# Script: hello
pub global run hello:hello "$@"

The error about line 7 is the last line where you can see it is referencing plain pub. Change that line to the following:

dart pub global run hello:hello "$@"

Now you can run your app from anywhere:

hello

Hello world!

This is only a temporary workaround. Follow this issue for updates. Thank you to Kelvin Omereshone for pointing me in the right direction.

Activating a dart app with pub global activate

Update

2 Answers