[Vala] Newbie questions

[coulamac <aigiskos yahoo com>]

Hi,

I'm attempting to learn Vala and am an extreme newbie,
so please be gentle with me.

I am using Ubuntu and dowloaded vala using synaptic. 
Then I copied the Basic Sample from live.gnome.org
page into a text file I called valaSamples.vala.

First I tried to compile valaSamples.vala with valac
from a directory of my making in ~/Documents.  I
received an error saying I should include
gobject-2.0.pc to my PKG_CONFIG_PATH.  I've been
trying to echo $PKG_CONFIG_PATH and set it, but I'm
not having much luck.  Can anyone give me very, very
detailed basic instructions on how to compile a vala
hello world in this fashion?

Second, I decided to place my shiny valaSamples.vala
in usr/bin/ where valac lives to see if I could outwit
PKG_CONFIG_PATH.  I succeeded, but I ran into another
problem.  I got the following error: Segmentation
Fault (core dumped).  Hmmm... does anyone know how to
get more detailed information to find out what went
wrong?

For the record, here is the text in valaSamples.vala:

/* Basic Vala Sample Code */
using GLib;

public class Sample : Object {
        public Sample () {
        }

        public void run () {
                stdout.printf ("Hello World\n");
        }

        static int main (string[] args) {
                var sample = new Sample ();
                sample.run ();
                return 0;
        }
}


Thanks in advance for your patience and help!  I will 
be happy to edit the tutorial in live.gnome.org with
your insights, if you don't think the information is
too basic.

~Andrew

~~~~~~~~~
dissertus scribendo latine videri volo.


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