How to install Dart in Google Compute Engine (GCE)?

Question

I am trying to learn both Dart and GCE. I already created a server at GCE, but I don't know how to install Dart since I can only use Linux commands on the Debian server.

Answer 1

This is mostly about Dart on AppEngine:

You should be able to find all information here https://www.dartlang.org/cloud/ I did it using the instructions from this page and the linked pages at the bottom. The discussions here https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!forum/cloud provide some useful bits too.

Dart on Compute engine:

Here is a blog post that covers it pretty good http://financecoding.github.io/blog/2013/09/30/getting-started-with-dart-on-compute-engine/ but some things have changed since this was written.

There are docker images https://github.com/dart-lang/dart_docker ready to execute Dart scripts. Just search for information how to use Docker images with GCE and you should be fine (there should already be a lot available)

Please ask again if you encounter concrete problems.

Dart on AppEngine runs as Managed VM. Managed VMs work differently than real AppEngine VMs that run 'native' supported languages like Java, Python, and Go. Managed VMs are in fact Compute engines but managed by AppEngine. This means they are launched and shut down depending on the load (and depending on some basic configuration settings in app.yaml and also depending on payment settings) while Compute Engines instances are basically always on. You have to manage yourself when instances should be added/removed depending on the load. There is Kubernetes which is a handy tool to make this easier but you have to actually manage your instances. Besides from that there is not much difference between Managed VMs and Compute Engine instances. A difference to native AppEngine is that you can add any libraries and also binaries to Managed VMs like to CE. There are pricing differences but I don't know details about this myself yet