dvm install

Download, verify and install a Dart SDK into the central cache.

dvm install <version|channel|alias>

Downloads a Dart SDK from Google's dart-archive bucket, verifies its checksum, and extracts it into ~/.dvm/versions/<version>.

dvm install 3.13.2

Installed Dart 3.13.2 to /Users/you/.dvm/versions/3.13.2

Already installed? It says so and exits 0, straight from disk:

Dart 3.13.2 is already installed at /Users/you/.dvm/versions/3.13.2

Flags#

Flag	Effect
`-f`, `--force`	Reinstall even if the version is already present.

What you can name#

Argument	Behavior
A version — `3.13.2`	Installed as written, and read straight from disk if you already have it.
A channel — `stable`, `beta`, `dev`	dvm asks the archive what that channel currently means, installs it, and records the answer in `~/.dvm/config.json` .
An alias — `work`	Followed locally to whatever it points at, then installed.

Naming a channel is the one form that costs a network round trip for resolution, which is the whole reason to type it: you are asking what stable means today.

Recording what a channel meant#

dvm install stable

writes channels.stable into ~/.dvm/config.json. This is what makes a later dvm use stable work: version resolution answers from local files, so the concrete version is written down at install time, ready for it.

Note the asymmetry: channels.stable moves only when you name the channel. Installing 3.13.2 by version leaves it where it is, even if 3.13.2 happens to be the current stable, so your stable keeps meaning whatever you last asked for.

How an install is made safe#

Download dartsdk-<os>-<arch>-release.zip from the archive.
Verify it against the sibling .sha256sum published by Google. A mismatch aborts; nothing is installed.
Extract into a temporary directory under ~/.dvm/cache/.
Rename that directory into place as ~/.dvm/versions/<version>.

The rename is what makes step 4 atomic: ~/.dvm/versions/<version> appears complete or not at all. An interrupted install leaves a partial directory in cache/, which is disposable and safe to delete at any time.

Extraction also runs an explicit chmod pass on POSIX. The zip decoder carries unix permissions without applying them, so this pass is what leaves everything under bin/ executable.

Platforms#

Binaries exist for macos/linux/windows on x64 and arm64, plus arm and riscv64 on Linux. dvm picks the one matching the machine it is running on.