vala Compiler for the GObject type system valac, the Vala compiler, is a self-hosting compiler that translates Vala source code into C source and header files. It uses the GObject type system to create classes and interfaces declared in the Vala source code. The syntax of Vala is similar to C#, modified to better fit the GObject type system. Vala supports modern language features as the following: Interfaces, Properties, Signals, Foreach, Lambda expressions, Type inference for local variables, Generics, Non-null types, Assisted memory management, Exception handling, Type modules (Plugins) Vala is designed to allow access to existing C libraries, especially GObject-based libraries, without the need for runtime bindings. All that is needed to use a library with Vala is an API file, containing the class and method declarations in Vala syntax. Vala currently comes with bindings for GLib and GTK+ and many others from the GNOME Platform. Using classes and methods written in Vala from an application written in C is not difficult. The Vala library only has to install the generated header files and C applications may then access the GObject-based API of the Vala library as usual. It should also be easily possible to write a bindings generator for access to Vala libraries from applications written in e.g. C# as the Vala parser is written as a library, so that all compile-time information is available when generating a binding. Vala Jürg Billeter juergbi Raffaele Sandrini Rico Tzschichholz ricotz