Re: [Vala] Vala++

[Christian Hergert <christian hergert me>]

On 04/04/2017 12:25 PM, Daniel Brendle wrote:
> On 04/04/2017 11:47 AM, Mohan R wrote:
> > A request to gnome+rust language developers, Please keep dbus and glade
> > integration as easy as Vala. I enjoy writing GUI and dbus apps with Vala.
> > It's just awesome integration which I don't see in other language bindings.

> I second this.
>
> As a matter of fact there are many languages you can use gobject in. But
> it doesn't necessarily feel right because you're supposed to follow the
> patterns of the language (and naturally also want to do so) but you have
> to follow GLibs pattern. About ten years earlier i started programming
> against Gtk in python which was one of the more convenient ways to do so
> at the time (before i tried coding Gtk in perl and C). Oh boy. It was
> such a hazzle until I figured out which of the mechanics belonged to
> python and wich ones belonged to glib and even that there is a
> difference between python threads and glib threads. Each language brings
> their own means (stdlib) of interfacing with system functionality and
> GLib brings it's own. This will allways be confusing in any language
> that does not follow the same principles as Vala and Genie. I've read
> that you can use Rust without a standard library. Maybe this will
> actually make it suitable for GObject code. I know i repeat myself, but
> i am stoked to see the results.

I feel a bit weird discussing this stuff on the Vala-list, but since
that is where the communication is happening…

We did discuss resource embedding and "attributes" which I think is the
major value being referred to. Since the GObject integration (both
consuming and exporting C ABI) uses rust compiler plugins, we can do the
same to enable C♯/Vala style [foo] attributes. These are much easier to
implement in Rust plugins than writing a new language/compiler.

It's likely we'll want to find a way to integrate rust embedded files
with GResources.

I believe some of the wip prototype code does get/set/construct just
like Vala. We can create pretty much any syntax we want (within reason).

Of course, we only had a 3 day hackfest, so there is still plenty of
work to do. I assume we'll have a large group working on things at
GUADEC¹ this year, so if that interests you, consider going.

-- Christian

¹ https://2017.guadec.org/