[Vala] Metatada files doubts

["Alejandro T. Colombini" <atcolombini gmail com>]

Hi,
    I'm binding a C library I wrote and right now I was only using the
metadata files to avoid vapigen from skipping some methods with varargs and
rename things.
    As I was testing the library from Vala using the generated vapi files I
noticed that a boxed type I used was not being translated as expected to
Vala, as this boxed type is very similar to the Gtk.TreeIter and I also
noticed that this one was working exactly as I expected mine to work, I
looked at how it was binded to Vala and it was not a [Compact] annotated
class like mine, it was a struct and also, from Vala, it could be declared
using "var iter = Gtk.TreeIter ();", so I looked at the metadata file used
to generate it in the vala repository and I just found this:

    GtkTreeIter is_value_type="1"
    gtk_tree_iter_copy hidden="1"
    gtk_tree_iter_free hidden="1"

    Then, when I tried to apply these lines in my metadata, vapigen gave me
an error:

    Db-1.0.metadata:6.6-6.18: error: unknown argument

    Also, I use a slightly different notation for everything:

    Db cheader_filename="db/db.h"
    Model.get skip=false
    Model.set skip=false

    Being db_model_get and db_model_set the C headers for the methods
skipped by GObject Introspection. I've read in the list that 'skip' and
'hidden' offer the same results, so this problem is solved, but using the
is_value_type is not possible in my metadata files. I've tried more of the
metadata parameters listed in [1] and i've got the same error, or in some
cases (like the hidden parameter) just a warning telling that the argument
is never used.

    My doubts are: are there two different metadata languages? And, is the
Gtk.TreeIter created binded using just these three lines of metadata or is
there something more?

Regards,
     Alex


1: https://live.gnome.org/Vala/Manual/GIDL%20metadata%20format