maemo.org - Talk - vala 0.5.7 in extras-devel

Hi,

After a bit of a prod; and a delay; mud-builder's vala recipe has been updated to the latest release 0.5.7 and uploaded to Extras-Devel as "vala" - this can now be used in Build-Depends lines in auto-builder packages.

What is Vala?
Vala is a modern, object-oriented programming language with a syntax inspired by C# and Java. However, it compiles to native code (via C), giving the benefits of modern programming languages and the speed of native development.

From its website:

Quote:

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.

Example
I've also uploaded another little package - vala-sample (basically, HildonSample) - which demonstrates that a Build-Depends line containing "vala" can be built using the auto-builder:

View source
Install Vala Sample in the "Programming" section (in Extras-Devel)
Run it from the normal applications menu.

This sample (apart from showing how easy it is to package stuff with mud) demonstrates that unlike other modern programming languages on Maemo (such as Python, Ruby, Java or C#) there is no additional start-up lag in a Vala application.