Vala on Android

Breaking news in the Vala programming language mailing list here.

It has been managed by tarnyko to compile Vala sources under Android and be able to use Cairo. GTK+ has not to been ported. I'm quoting the interesting part of message verbatim below:

I managed to compile a Vala source directly to Android binary yesterday. And I think it might be of some interest to some people here.

For the record, I've written a tutorial here: http://www.tarnyko.net/en/?q=node/25

It's still very limited (only access to core Vala + GLib/Gobject methods) but it could easily be extended by porting libraries having Vala bindings ; although I know it's not easy stuff.

For the graphical part, GTK+ doesn't work yet but I know Cairo has been ported (http://code.google.com/p/cairo4android/) -and Cairo definitely has Vala bindings.

More information at the Vala programming language homepage.

Vala 0.19.0 released

A new development version of the Vala programming language has been released.

Changes

• Support scope = "async" attribute for parameters.
• Add --api-version option.
• Add atspi-2 bindings.
• Add gstreamer-rtsp-server-1.0 bindings.
• Bug fixes and binding updates. 

It must be noted that the new scope = "async" attribute is implemented only for bindings and not for Vala-written code. The scope = "async" is used with delegates without GDestroyNotify, and it specifies that the delegate will be called only once. So Vala will automatically take care of ref'ing the user data when passing the delegate, and unref'ing it after the delegate has been called.

Vala 0.18.0 + GTK 3.4.2 for Win32

This is an update of the unofficial build of the Vala programming language for Win32 kindly contributed by tarnyko. His announcement is as follows:

I come back to announce a bundle for Vala 0.18.0 and GTK+ 3.4.2 on Windows. for Vala 0.18.0 and GTK+ 3.4.2 on Windows.
Download link here :
http://www.tarnyko.net/en/?q=node/13
or here :
http://www.tarnyko.net/dl/vala.htm
(A helpful being told me that my formers installers had the bad habit of emptying the PATH variable if it was longer than 1023 characters: http://www.tarnyko.net/en/?q=comment/307#comment-307. It is now fixed for all installers ; please re-download them just in case.)

News for ValaWinPKG users

• The repos for Vala 0.16.0 and 0.18.0 are finally up !
• There are some packages regressions:
• FreeGLUT VAPI doesn't seem to work with Vala > 0.12.0. Needs some fixes from its original maintainer;
• Poppler doesn't work anymore, should apparently be updated. Will do this when I have time.
• There is a new package: LibUSB.
• If you want to use these new repos, you should really update ValaWinPKG before (http://www.tarnyko.net/en/?q=node/12). Sorry, but it's the last time it should be necessary.
• The new version of ValaWinPKG allows you to have multiple Vala installations and maintain their packages separately. See this tutorial (http://www.tarnyko.net/en/?q=node/14) for more info.

Regards,
Tarnyko

Gee 0.8.0 released

Together with Vala 0.18.0, the Vala collections library has also released the major 0.8.0 version, due to changes to the ABI.

Changes

• Fix Traversable.chop (bug #684348)
• Remove unnecessary method
• Update README
• Move everything to GenericAccessor

For more information and downloads see the Gee homepage.

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.

Vala bundle for Windows

Hi,
tarnyko contributed an unofficial Vala bundle containing Vala 0.12.0 and GTK+ 3.4.2 for Windows XP/Vista/7.
This one contains GTK+ 2.20.0, too, so you can still compile older GTK+ programs without modification.
Download here :
http://www.tarnyko.net/en/?q=node/1
or here :
http://www.tarnyko.net/dl/vala.htm

For ValaWinPKG users, the corresponding repository has been uploaded. A few notes:

• you should definitely update the program (here: http://www.tarnyko.net/dl/valawinpkg.htm) because 0.9b is broken with this bundl; 
• newer GLib allows use to have a Clutter package 
• newer GLib, however, gives problems with older LibGee and WebKit, so they've been removed from this new repo (should only be temporary);
• LibMX package is planned.

Final note:
A Vala 0.16.0 for Win32 bundle is WIP. It already works, only needs a few tweaks before uploading.

Original discussion here: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/vala-list/2012-September/msg00065.html

Vala 0.17.5 has been released

Hello, the new 0.17.5 development version of the Vala programming language has been released with lots of enhancements, bug fixes and language bindings.

Changes

• Support subclassing of GLib.Source.
• Switch pango bindings to .gir.
• Add gstreamer-1.0 core bindings.
• Add gst-plugins-base-1.0 bindings.
• Add gobject-introspection-1.0 bindings.
• Bug fixes and binding updates. 

More information and download at the Vala homepage.