[Vala] [ANNOUNCE] Vala 0.0.8 - Compiler for the GObject type system

[Jürg Billeter <j bitron ch>]

We are pleased to announce version 0.0.8 of Vala, a compiler for the
GObject type system.

Changes since 0.0.7
 * Add support for overridden properties.
 * Support properties and signals in interfaces.
 * Improve interface runtime suport.
 * Verify that classes implement all abstract and interface methods.
 * Basic compile-time support for generic types.
 * Default to strong references for return values and local variables.
 * Improve signal support.
 * Add support for pointers.
 * Improve support for numeric types.
 * Support writing GTypeModule-based plug-ins.
 * Improve manual memory management support.
 * Improve GTK+ bindings.
 * Many bug fixes.

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://vala.paldo.org/


The Vala Team

        Jürg Billeter and Raffaele Sandrini