Re: [Vala] libxml2 vapi

[Raffaele Sandrini <rasa gmx ch>]

On Fre, 2006-08-18 at 19:01 -0500, Leonardo Boshell wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Good work and thanks for the latest release.
>
> As I mentioned on a previous post, I'm interested in helping out with
> documenting the various bindings available to vala. I've been playing
> with different ideas on how to do it, and at this moment I have a couple
> of alternatives in mind.
>
> Basically they would involve the automated creation of docbook skeleton
> files that would then be manually populated based on the original
> documentation of the relevant libraries. I think having all the details
> of the VAPI files in docbook format would provide a good balance between
> expressiveness and usability.
ATM we use javadoc syntax to document our code. We thought of porting
doxygen to be able to parse vala files which should not be a big problem
since its pretty similar to C# and it already suports javadoc.

> Anyway, regarding the implementation of such a tool, my first option
> would be writing it in vala; it would be great for learning purposes,
> and it would re-use all the code analysis stages implemented by the vala
> parser. However, the XML handling would be an important piece and as of
> now the libxml2 vapi file in the repository is still incomplete.
>
> So my question would be, are you close to releasing the VAPI generator
> you've mentioned in the list? I'd like to try it on libxml2 so I can
> start working on the doc tool. Or would it be possible that you use it
> to update libxml-2.0.vala in the repository?
The bindigs generator does only works on gobject libraries (like the
gtk-sharp one). Libs as libxml2 need to be written by hand.

The libxml2 vapi is at a very early stage. It lets you compile and run
the reader example on the libxml page. We have planned to create a
DomXml vala lib on top of it.

We are currently still implementing and stabilising the language itself.
Some important basic features needed to create powerful libraries are
still missing.

cheers,
Raffaele