Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Rhythmbox And Vala - Questions:

[Daniel Hams <daniel hams gmail com>]

On Tue, 2010-06-29 at 13:34 +1000, Jonathan Matthew wrote:
> Yes, the next release (this friday) will install a pkg-config file, C
> headers, and the current manually defined .vapi files. I've managed to
> build a basic C plugin using only the installed files, but I haven't
> tried anything with vala. I don't see any reason it wouldn't work, but
> I don't know for sure that it does work.
> 

Hi Johnathan,

That sounds great, I'll definitely have a play around with it.

> > Assuming we can get some patches to the Vala tools to "autohide" any
> > newly added artefacts - would this make automation of binding
generation
> > satisfactory?
> I don't really know what you mean by this, so I can't really give an
answer.
> 

I think I explained myself terribly - what I meant was that any bindings
generation for Vala for the moment _must have_ manual annotations to get
things right like vaargs and array length indicators.

TThis means if our theoretical generation tool auto-exposes things on
discovery we will end up with bindings that are incorrect (for Vala).

But to be honest this comes back to the points Sean made concerning an
explicit / implicit plugin API. If there is an explicit plugin interface
perhaps auto-generation could be much cleaner and not suffer from such
tweaks.

> So far, vala hasn't been a high priority, so I haven't really thought
> about it much. I've generally been happy picking between C and Python
> for plugins I write, and most external plugins are written in Python.
> 

Totally understand. I've just been scratching an itch and it's been a
interesting and fun way to learn Vala and some bits of Rhythmbox.

I just figured now it's kinda doing what I originally intended, I'd see
what the project actually _needs_ instead of just going off on a
tangent :-)

Cheers,

Dan