> On Monday, 16 December 2019, 18:01:57 GMT, giacomo alberini via vala-list 
<[email protected]> wrote:  
 > My question is: is this the place in which the development of the language
> and ecosystem takes place? If not, where should I ask questions or in
> general get support for the project?

These are good questions and don't seem to be covered in 
https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Vala/DeveloperDocumentation at
 the moment. 

This list is a good place to ask questions on what the Vala compiler and tools 
"should" do in general. A separate devel mailing list was used in the past, but 
I think this one is fine now. You can also ask questions on IRC (some use the 
Matrix.org IRC bridge).
Once it is understood what "should" happen then the best place to communicate 
is https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vala/issues Raise an issue with an example 
and either work on a patch or hope someone will also want to fix the same 
problem and work on it. The idea of what "should" happen may also change at 
this point because a more technical discussion or patches can lead to a better 
understanding of a problem and change the agreed view of the solution.

In the last few days there has been a fair amount of activity in the Vala 
GitLab instance. An example of fixing a problem 
is:https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vala/merge_requests/98https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vala/issues/534This
 was one issue to do with the null coalescing operator, but is a good example 
of collaborative development. Notice there are several different patches 
attempting to resolve this from different people over a few years. The point is 
don't be put off making a contribution if you don't have "the" solution. Give 
it your best effort and the work you have done may inspire others at a later 
time to finish it off.
Contributions can also be in the form of documentation. As someone new to the 
code base there will be many questions and that helps review the documentation. 
For example, https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Vala/Hacking is supposed to give 
an overview of how the Vala compiler works, but needs a lot of work. If someone 
is asking questions then it helps guide the development of the documentation to 
make it more relevant.

> I started to code in Vala because of a project, called Akira, and soon
> after I realize that I like the language and the integration with the GUI
> toolkit, even though I found some issues, quirks and in general
> difficulties using it effectively.

If GUI (GTK) is your area of interest then a starting issue could be 
instantiation of third party GTK widgets. For example when using a GtkBuilder 
file with a GtkSourceView widget then the Vala code requires 
typeof(Gtk.SourceView).ensure () to register the type, but using GtkTextView 
doesn't. An example in a project: 
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-games/blob/461d4dd5be74abd7570c42ccbb852809c0bc6f11/src/main.valaI've
 got some notes on the problem, but haven't produced a simple test case or 
looked at the C code generated by Vala.
Best wishes,
Al




  
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