Vala 0.18.0 released

The new stable branch of the Vala programming language has reached the 0.18.x version. There are major fixes and enhancements since the 0.16.x that are described below.

Changes since 0.16.0

• Add libgnome-menu-3.0, gstreamer-1.0 core, gst-plugins-base-1.0, gobject-introspection-1.0 bindings.
• Support subclassing of GLib.Source.
• Switch pango bindings to .gir.
• Warn when accessing static members with an instance reference.
• Recompute length when casting between array types. 
• Support [GenericAccessors] attribute for interfaces.
• Deprecate implicit .begin for async methods.
• Drop Dova and POSIX profile.
• Require and target GLib >= 2.18.
• Support async creation methods.
• Improve assertion messages.
• Add --enable-gobject-tracing commandline option. 
• Support simple method-level profiling.
• Add VALA_CHECK_MODULES and VALA_PROG_VAPIGEN to vala.m4.
• Bug fixes and binding updates.

The [GenericAccessors] attribute allows using generics in interface methods. Before this change, it was impossible to access the generics information of a subclass from within an interface method. Adding this attribute on top of an interface will autogenerate virtual methods at the C level that are automatically implemented by subclasses. It must be noted that using this feature on an existing interface will break the ABI.

The method-level profiling is enabled by adding the [Profile] attribute on top of your methods. When your application terminates, some stats will be printed to the output.

For more information and download see the Vala homepage.