[maemo-developers] Color wheel mockup

[From: Graham Cobb]

On Monday 05 October 2009 14:11:20 Thomas Perl wrote:
> Also, I have been thinking of implementing relevant parts of the code
> in Vala (and then either compiling the vala code to C source code for
> the library or build-depending on Vala, if this is okay with you) - makes
> it easier to write code more quickly and avoids some mistakes when
> trying to write GObject code directly in C (at least that's my opinion ;).

I am not keen.  I have not seen any Vala autogenerated C code so feel free to 
correct any wrong assumptions but I really would like to get the widget into 
Hildon, which means it will have to conform to Hildon coding guidelines.  

Also, I would like to be able to port the code to other platforms (including 
earlier versions of Maemo) which may not have Vala available or in other 
projects where Vala code is not allowed.  I assume that porting is going to 
be easier if we are not trying to port auto-generated C code.

> This does not mean that we should the whole code in Vala, but as
> Vala can compile directly into C code with support for proper GObjects,
> it seems to be a nice way to do at least some parts of the library, right?

Our first priority is to get an implementation of the widget available and if 
you are volunteering to do it, but only in Vala, I would certainly not want 
to stop you!  However, I would prefer to see that limited to prototyping and 
for someone to re-implement any Vala code in C, written in conformance with 
Hildon requirements and intended to be maintained in C.  

I would not want HildonExtras to be less portable than Hildon itself.  Unless 
Vala is already a dependency for building Hildon I would prefer it not to be 
a dependency for building HildonExtras.

Graham