{"id":872,"date":"2011-01-18T08:29:57","date_gmt":"2011-01-18T08:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/?p=872"},"modified":"2023-07-14T16:40:38","modified_gmt":"2023-07-14T16:40:38","slug":"programming-in-vala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/technology\/programming-in-vala\/","title":{"rendered":"Programming in Vala"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As some of you may know, I work for an open source software non-profit called Yorba<\/a>. Our best known product is Shotwell<\/a>, a photo management application that’s similar to Picasa or iPhoto, but created for Linux. It’s the default photo app these days in both Ubuntu and Fedora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What many of our users don’t know is we don’t develop our software in C or C++… we use Vala.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what the hell is Vala?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cool thing about Vala is that it’s a fully compiled, statically typed OOP language designed to be built for Gtk applications. The syntax is very similar to Java or C#, but the garbage collection is based entirely on reference counting. In other words, you get the simplicity of a modern language with the speed of a fully compiled program. Vala bindings are already available for Gtk, Gdk, GLib, Gee, and many other libraries. Or you can create your own bindings when needed by creating a Vapi file. There’s a documentation program, Valadoc, which generates pretty HTML documentation for your classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entire Vala package is available under an LGPL license, which is a free software\/open source license. You’ll never have to worry about Microsoft or Oracle stepping on your toes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s the “Hello World” app from the Vala tutorial<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
class Demo.HelloWorld : GLib.Object {\n    public static int main(string[] args) {\n        stdout.printf(\"Hello, World\\n\");\n        return 0;\n    }\n}<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Save your file as hello.vala. You can compile from the command line with:
valac hello.vala<\/code>
Now watch closely… the Vala compiler actually just creates a .c file! It’s what’s called a “source compiler” in that it converts source code from one language to source code in a different language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next, valac automatically invokes GCC to compile the .c file into an executable binary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Run your demo code with:
.\/hello<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simple, huh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vala syntax includes the language constructs you’d expect in 2011, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n