2010-07-27

Vala 0.9.4 released

Hello,
a new version of the Vala compiler has been released. This version does not introduce major features but mostly bug-fixes and Dova profile enhancements:
  • Append documentation comments to generated C files.
  • Skip <doc> tags in .gir files.

  • Various improvements to the Dova profile.
  • Many bug fixes and binding updates.
As usual, you can find more information at live.gnome.org/Vala.

2010-07-14

Vala 0.9.3 released and documentation news

Hello,
this 0.9.3 release of the Vala programming language adds many interesting features as well as many bug fixes and binding improvements. Also I'd like to point you out to the new collaborative Vala Reference Manual and Hackers' Guide to Vala. The release notes:
  • Support newlines in double quoted string literals.
  • Add experimental support for main blocks.
  • Add experimental vala tool to compile and run code.
  • Initial support for generic delegates.
  • Support using GClosure for delegate parameters.
  • Support GBoxed-based memory management.
  • Improvements to the .gir reader and writer.
  • Various improvements to the Dova profile.
  • Many bug fixes and binding updates.
Check out the Vala home for more information and download.

2010-07-11

Vala for scripting

Hello,
the upcoming release of Vala will have basic scripting capability (mostly for small tests). Yes, this sounds weird, but it's more trivial than what you expect. The installation will create a symbolic link /usr/bin/vala -> /usr/bin/valac that you can use to run vala scripts.

Also, vala scripts can have implicit main(), so that it becomes faster to write test scripts. An example:
#!/usr/bin/env vala
message ("test");
Save it as test.vala, now you can either chmod +x test.vala and run ./test.vala or just vala test.vala.
Valac will automatically compile the script and run it. After that the executable will be deleted, which means there's no cache.

This feature is of course experimental and it's not currently possible to import other vala files.