Re: [Vala] Vala for embedded systems, IDEs, debugging

[Thomas Jollans <t jollybox de>]

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: vala-list-bounces gnome org [mailto:vala-list-bounces gnome org]
> Im Auftrag von Joe Dluzen
> Gesendet: Montag, 10. September 2012 16:32
> An: vala-list gnome org
> Betreff: [Vala] Vala for embedded systems, IDEs, debugging
>
> Hi all,
>
> I've been following Vala for some time now, and am interested in
> using it for embedded systems. Does anyone else have experience with
> that?
> I'd like to hear both good and bad experiences.

On Tue, 11 Sep 2012 11:15:43 +0000, Adrian Stern wrote:
> Hey There
>
> I'am also very intressted in hearing about this. Does vala work on
> the ARMv6 architecture?


Vala is not specific to any processor architecture. Vala code is 
compiled to C code, which is then compiled by GCC to machine code. GCC 
has good support for cross-compiling, so with a suitably powerful build 
system that knows how to call valac and a cross-gcc, (the autotools will 
do the trick if used properly) the language is not an issue.

So the more interesting question is: can and do you want to use glib? 
Vala is generally used with glib/gobject, and many of its features 
require linking against glib (which may be impractical on your embedded 
system, depending on the specs/requirements), but valac does have a 
POSIX profile, which will generate POSIX-compliant C code without the 
glib dependency. See 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9550000/can-vala-be-used-without-gobject

So - using Vala on an embedded system is quite possible, but if you 
choose to forego glib, you will have to make do without many of Vala's 
object-oriented features.

> I have some related questions I hope to get some answers for:
>
> Is remote debugging supported?

Vala can be debugged with gdb. gdb is the swiss army knife of 
debugging, embedded/remote included.

> How is the IDE support? I checked the tools section of the website,
> the most up to date one seemed to be MonoDevelop.

IDE support is dismal. If you want integrated editing and debugging, 
your options are Anjuta and MonoDevelop, and from a brief look a few 
months ago, Anjuta's Vala support is quite limited, and MonoDevelop's 
Vala support is somewhat broken. (it looks like it used to be good, and 
then things changed, but I don't know)

> What about crash dumps, is there debugging support for them?

I'm not sure about that, but in general, you can use all features of 
gdb and nemiver (a graphical front-end to gdb, and probably the most 
pleasant Vala debugging experience around at this point) with Vala, but 
will be quite aware of the fact that you're actually debugging C code 
with Vala source line number annotations.

Thomas