Re: Using vala in GNOME

[Jürg Billeter <j bitron ch>]

On Sun, 2008-06-29 at 23:35 +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-06-29 at 22:02 +0000, Stef wrote:
> > I've been implementing some parts of seahorse (and maybe soon
> > gnome-keyring) in Vala.
> <snip>
> > Barring any objections, the next release of seahorse will contain some
> > vala code.
> 
> I object. Given that I see people filing bugs against Totem whenever the
> Vala API changes (which is, since Totem got Vala plugin support, about 3
> times) we have to make changes.

Out of the three changes in Totem I've seen, we have
      * one incompatible change in the Vala type system, i.e. the
        requirement to specify Object (GObject) as base class, however,
        the change in Vala was 10 months ago and a trivial change in
        Totem
      * add `abstract' modifier to an abstract class, which was no
        change in Vala, just improved checks, we didn't enforce it
        before
      * add `throws Error' to the method declaration, which was also no
        change in Vala, just a bug in the bindings

That said, I fully understand when people don't want to depend on Vala
as long as we don't guarantee language stability, however, that will be
the case for 2.24, if everything goes as planned. Also, it makes sense
to allow the module maintainers to decide this, in my opinion, as long
as they distribute the generated C sources.

Jürg
-- 
Jürg Billeter <j bitron ch>