[ANNOUNCE] Vala 0.0.3 - Compiler for the GObject type system

[Juerg Billeter <j bitron ch>]

This is the third preview release of Vala 0.0.3, a compiler for the
GObject type system. This release adds support for creating arrays and
switch statements and provides experimental bindings for GTK+ 2.10 and
Cairo 1.2.

Vala is a new programming language that aims to bring modern programming
language features to GNOME developers without imposing any additional
runtime requirements and without using a different ABI compared to
applications and libraries written in C.

valac, the Vala compiler, is a self-hosting compiler that translates
Vala source code into C source and header files. It uses the GObject
type system to create classes and interfaces declared in the Vala source
code. It's also planned to generate GIDL files when gobject-
introspection is ready.

The syntax of Vala is similar to C#, modified to better fit the GObject
type system. Vala supports modern language features as the following:

	* Interfaces
	* Properties
	* Signals
	* Foreach
	* Lambda expressions
	* Type inference for local variables
	* Generics [PLANNED]
	* Non-null types [PARTIAL]
	* Assisted memory management
	* Exception handling [PLANNED]

Vala is designed to allow access to existing C libraries, especially
GObject-based libraries, without the need for runtime bindings. Each to
be used library requires a Vala API file at compile-time, containing the
class and method declarations in Vala syntax. Vala currently comes with
experimental bindings for GLib and GTK+. It's planned to provide generated
bindings for the full GNOME Platform at a later stage.

Using classes and methods written in Vala from an application written in
C is not difficult. The Vala library only has to install the generated
header files and C applications may then access the GObject-based API of
the Vala library as usual. It should also be easily possible to write a
bindings generator for access to Vala libraries from applications
written in e.g. C# as the Vala parser is written as a library, so that
all compile-time information is available when generating a binding.

More information about Vala is available at

	http://www.paldo.org/vala/


The Vala Team

        Jürg Billeter and Raffaele Sandrini

-- 
Juerg Billeter <j bitron ch>