Warden #

Static Builder CLI

Warden is a lightweight CLI tool to watch and compile Dart and Sass files for frontend projects. It's designed for projects that use server-side rendered HTML but still want custom JS/CSS assets compiled automatically.

📚 Docs: pub.dev/packages/warden

✨ Features #

• 🔁 Watches your Dart and Sass files and recompiles on change
• 📦 Moves specified dependencies (e.g. node_modules assets) into your build output
• 🛠️ Bundles your dependency JS files into a single bundle.js (optional)
• 🧱 Fully configurable via a warden.yaml file
• 🎯 Supports multiple tasks like compiling Dart to JS and Sass to CSS

⚙️ Setup #

Create a warden.yaml in your project root:

# The root directory of your source files
source_dir: examples

# Where to output built files (JavaScript, CSS, etc.)
destination: static/

# Dependency handling (e.g. node_modules)
dependencies:
  source: examples/node_modules
  bundle: true                      # (Optional) Bundle all files into a single bundle.js
  main: static/main.js              # (Optional) Dart-built JS to append to the bundle
  files:
    - 'poppyjs/dist/Poppy.min.js'
    - 'bootstrap/dist/js/bootstrap.min.js'

# Tasks to run (like build steps)
tasks:
  frontend:
    executable: dart
    args: ["compile", "js", "bin/main.dart", "-o", "../static/main.js"]
    src: examples

  styles:
    executable: dart
    args: ["run", "sass", "sass/index.scss:../static/index.css"]
    src: examples

▶️ Running #

Run Warden from your terminal in watch mode:

dart run warden --file=warden.yaml

This will: • Move files listed in dependencies.files into the output directory • Bundle them into a single bundle.js if bundle: true • Compile Dart to JS • Compile Sass to CSS • Watch and recompile on file changes

📦 Installation (coming soon) #

dart pub global activate warden

Then run from any Dart project:

warden --file=warden.yaml

🧪 Example Project Structure #

examples/
├── bin/
│   └── main.dart
├── lib/
│   └── examples.dart
├── sass/
│   └── index.scss
├── node_modules/
├── warden.yaml

License

MIT © 2025 joegasewicz