vala 语言

http://live.gnome.org/Vala
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.
目标是把现代语言的特性带到GNOME开发上，不需要附加的运行时。

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.

valac 是vala的编译器，它是一个“自编译”的编译器，可以把vala源代码翻译成c源代码和头文件，使用GObject类型系统。

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的语法与C#类似。

示例代码：

Vala List Example

This sample uses the List class from GLib. There is also various container classes in libgee, which are often easier to use or more powerful. See ../GeeSamples

Toggle line numbers

   1 public static int main (string[] args) {
   2     List<string> list = new List<string> ();
   3     list.append ("one");
   4     list.append ("two");
   5     list.append ("three");
   6     
   7     stdout.printf ("list.length () = %u\n", list.length ());
   8 
   9     // Traditional iteration
  10     for (int i = 0; i < list.length (); i++) {
  11         stdout.printf ("%s\n", list.nth_data (i));
  12     }
  13 
  14     // Comfortable iteration
  15     foreach (string element in list) {
  16         stdout.printf ("%s\n", element);
  17     }
  18 
  19     return 0;
  20 }

Compile and Run

$ valac -o list list.vala
$ ./list

当前版本，Vala 0.7.4 ，但大部分功能已实现，预计在(2009-09-14)发布Vala 1.0.0。在GNOME下，大有替代C之势。
来段代码对比:


性能对比：
http://code.google.com/p/vala-benchmarks/wiki/BenchResults
性能与C接近，文件尺寸略大。