Re: [Vala] [ANNOUNCE] Vala 0.11.3 - Compiler for the GObject type system

[Nicolas Joseph <nicolas joseph valaide org>]

Hi,

On Wed, 05 Jan 2011 23:41:09 +0100, Jürg Billeter wrote:
> We are pleased to announce version 0.11.3 of Vala, a compiler for the
> GObject type system.
>
> Vala 0.11.3 is now available for download at:
>    http://download.gnome.org/sources/vala/0.11/
>
> This is a development release leading toward 0.12.
>
> Changes since 0.11.2
>  * Support BusName sender parameter in GDBus servers.
>  * More refactoring in the code generator.
>  * Many bug fixes and binding updates.
>
> 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.
>
> 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
>         * Non-null types
>         * Assisted memory management
>         * Exception handling
>
> Vala is designed to allow access to existing C libraries, especially
> GObject-based libraries, without the need for runtime bindings. All 
> that
> is needed to use a library with Vala is an API file, containing the 
> class
> and method declarations in Vala syntax. Vala currently comes with
> 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://www.vala-project.org/
>
>
> Jürg Billeter

FYI, the binaries for Windows are moved to a new location: 
https://code.google.com/p/vala-win32/