This comment was originally written by @butlermatt

Opps forgot to mention. I'm using Ubuntu Linux 64-bit, 64-bit dart editor:
Dart Editor version 0.2.3_r14669
Dart SDK version 0.2.3.0_r14669

It seems correct in this example.
The first argument to expect should be a function. Passing it a non-function means that it tries to call the non-existing "call" method on true, which will indeed throw a noSuchMethodError.

Is this happening in other cases too, or is it just NoSuchMethodError?
There have been changes recently that makes incorrect calls now throw NoSuchMethodError as the specification requires.

Added NeedsInfo label.

This comment was originally written by @butlermatt

Yes now that you mention it, it does appear to be only for NoSuchMethodErrors. My evaluation of the issue wasn't entirely correctly.

This still seems unexpected to me however, for my 'actual' I expect the code I place there to throw the error, not for the attempt to run that code (ie trying to call the 'call' method). I wouldn't expect "true" to throw NoSuchMethodError, and this test should fail:

test("This should fail", () {
  expect(true, throwsNoSuchMethodError);
});

Added Area-Language label.

If I understand you correctly, what you are really saying is that if the actual is not an instance of Function, then a throwsX matcher should fail. Does that sound like a reasonable interpretation? That would be an easy change to make.

Fixed in r18401

Added Fixed label.