[Vala] [Genie] Generic of a Generic, dict hash/eval overrides

[Arc Riley <arcriley gmail com>]

What is the intended syntax for something like this:

blobs : list of array of uint8

The best I've found so far is
struct bytes
    value : array of uint8
blobs : list of bytes

Which is less desirable as its more verbose to refer to and generates
less-clean code.  For this specific case it'd be awesome to have an actual
"bytes" type counterpart to the "string" type.


Also, reading http://jamiemcc.livejournal.com/12009.html:

> The big advantage of embedding lists and dicts in the language is that it
> makes it much easier for the developer to make use of them. It also means
> genie can make decisions about which hashing and equal functions to use
> based on the types (Eg for a dict of string,string it would use the glib
> g_str_hash and g_str_equal functions automatically although you could of
> course specify different ones by setting the properties explicitly) whereas
> in vala you would have to type something like :
>
> var map = new Gee.HashMap<string, string>(GLib.str_hash, GLib.str_equal);
>
> There seems to be a problem in that these HashMap properties are read-only:
http://people.gnome.org/~dvillevalois/libgee/doc/gee-1.0/Gee.HashMap.key_hash_func.html<http://people.gnome.org/%7Edvillevalois/libgee/doc/gee-1.0/Gee.HashMap.key_hash_func.html>

The Pythonic way would be for the key type to have a hash and equal
functions and for the dict to use these when present, but it appears
undocumented how to set these functions explicitly.