Re: [Vala] General Information about this list & Vala

[Al Thomas <astavale yahoo co uk>]

  > On Monday, 16 December 2019, 18:01:57 GMT, giacomo alberini via vala-list <vala-list gnome org> wrote:  
> My question is: is this the place in which the development of the language
> and ecosystem takes place? If not, where should I ask questions or in
> general get support for the project?

These are good questions and don't seem to be covered in 
https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Vala/DeveloperDocumentation at
 the moment. 

This list is a good place to ask questions on what the Vala compiler and tools "should" do in general. A 
separate devel mailing list was used in the past, but I think this one is fine now. You can also ask 
questions on IRC (some use the Matrix.org IRC bridge).
Once it is understood what "should" happen then the best place to communicate is 
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vala/issues Raise an issue with an example and either work on a patch or hope 
someone will also want to fix the same problem and work on it. The idea of what "should" happen may also 
change at this point because a more technical discussion or patches can lead to a better understanding of a 
problem and change the agreed view of the solution.

In the last few days there has been a fair amount of activity in the Vala GitLab instance. An example of 
fixing a problem 
is:https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vala/merge_requests/98https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vala/issues/534This 
was one issue to do with the null coalescing operator, but is a good example of collaborative development. 
Notice there are several different patches attempting to resolve this from different people over a few years. 
The point is don't be put off making a contribution if you don't have "the" solution. Give it your best 
effort and the work you have done may inspire others at a later time to finish it off.
Contributions can also be in the form of documentation. As someone new to the code base there will be many 
questions and that helps review the documentation. For example, https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Vala/Hacking 
is supposed to give an overview of how the Vala compiler works, but needs a lot of work. If someone is asking 
questions then it helps guide the development of the documentation to make it more relevant.

> I started to code in Vala because of a project, called Akira, and soon
> after I realize that I like the language and the integration with the GUI
> toolkit, even though I found some issues, quirks and in general
> difficulties using it effectively.

If GUI (GTK) is your area of interest then a starting issue could be instantiation of third party GTK 
widgets. For example when using a GtkBuilder file with a GtkSourceView widget then the Vala code requires 
typeof(Gtk.SourceView).ensure () to register the type, but using GtkTextView doesn't. An example in a 
project: 
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-games/blob/461d4dd5be74abd7570c42ccbb852809c0bc6f11/src/main.valaI've 
got some notes on the problem, but haven't produced a simple test case or looked at the C code generated by 
Vala.
Best wishes,
Al