ANN: xfce4-vala version 0.1-a2 released

[mike.massonnet at gmail.com]

Xfce4 Vala provides bindings for the Xfce framework.

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.

The version 0.1 includes bindings for the following Xfce 4.6 libraries: libxfce4util, 
libxfce4menu, libxfconf, libxfcegui4, libexo, libxfce4panel.

This release is alpha 2 but provides already bindings for the overall Xfce framework. The 
probably most interesting thing is the possibility to write external panel plugins, where 
an example is given in tests/panel-plugin/. To build it simply run:

  valac --vapidir=../../vapi --pkg=libxfce4panel-1.0 button.vala -C

and modify the button.desktop file to point it to the current location of the button 
executable -- fix the X-XFCE-Exec key in the desktop file. You can than copy the desktop 
file to $prefix/share/xfce4/panel-plugins/ (or create a symlink) and be able to add it to 
your panel via right click on Panel > Add item.

It is not possible to write Internal plugins, and I doubt I will support that for the 0.1 
release (although I already wanted to post-pone libxfce4panel bindings to 0.2). In fact it 
would be necessary to build a lib without a main function. I will still have to figure this 
out for Xfce 4.8 where all panel plugins will be build as libs.

Enjoy and please try it out and give feedback on the resulting VAPIs!
Mike

Download this release:
  http://goodies.xfce.org/releases/xfce4-vala/xfce4-vala-0.1-a2.tar.bz2

Changelog:
  http://goodies.xfce.org/releases/xfce4-vala/ChangeLog

Project website:
  http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-vala/