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Core Concepts

This page contains a high-level overview of some of the core concepts of DCL.

What is DCL?​

DCL is a toolkit that helps you identify and fix problems in your Dart and Flutter code. These problems can range from potential runtime bugs and violations of best practices to styling issues. DCL includes over 70 built-in rules to validate your code against various expectations, and you can customize these rules to fit your specific needs.

Rules​

Rules are central to how DCL works. They are used to check whether your code meets certain expectations, and to specify what should be done if it doesn't. Rules can also be configured with additional options specific to that rule.

For more information, see the Rules documentation.

Metrics​

Metrics are another important aspect of DCL. They are used to measure the complexity of your code and identify areas that may be difficult to maintain or test. This can be particularly useful for larger projects, where it can be challenging to keep track of all the different contributions from various developers. Metrics can also provide instant feedback on pull requests for smaller projects, helping to ensure that code stays easy to maintain.

All metrics are configurable.

For more information, see the Metrics documentation.

Commands​

In addition to providing rules and metrics, DCL also includes commands to help with codebase maintenance, such as identifying unused code, unused files, and unused localization.

For more information, see the CLI documentation.

Configuration​

DCL is designed to be flexible and configurable to fit your specific needs. You can choose to enable only metrics calculation, only rules, or both.

For more information, see the Configuration documentation.

DCL and Dart analyzer​

While the Dart analyzer is also a static analysis tool that highlights problems in code, there are some key differences between it and DCL:

  • DCL includes custom rules that are not included in the analyzer and linter tools.
  • DCL's rules are more configurable and therefore more flexible.
  • DCL provides metrics to measure codebase complexity and commands to help with codebase maintenance.

Using both tools as part of your development workflow can help ensure the quality of your code.