Vala 0.1.2

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.
Main features:
- Interfaces
- Properties
- Signals
- Foreach
- Lambda expressions
- Type inference for local variables
- Generics [PLANNED]
- Non-null types [PARTIAL]
- Assisted memory management
- Exception handling [PLANNED]
Vala is designed to allow access to existing C libraries, especially GObject-based libraries, without the need for runtime bindings. Each to be used library requires a Vala API file at compile-time, containing the class and method declarations in Vala syntax. Vala currently comes with incomplete bindings for GLib and GTK+. Its planned to provide generated bindings for the full GNOME Platform at a later stage.
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.
Enhancements:
- This release integrates support for the libgee collection library, improves support for generic types, and adds support for inner classes.
- Performance and memory management have been improved, and there are new command line options to control the C compiler.
- Experimental GStreamer bindings have been added.