Overview - Vala Reference Manual

Vala Reference Manual

## Overview

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.

### Getting started

The classic "Hello, world" example in Vala:

    using GLib;

    public class Sample : Object {
    	public Sample () {
    	}

    	public void run () {
    		stdout.printf ("Hello, world!\n");
    	}

    	static int main (string[] args) {
    		var sample = new Sample ();
    		sample.run ();
    		return 0;
    	}
    }

Store the code in a file whose name ends in ".vala", such as `hello.vala`, and compile it with the command:

    valac -o hello hello.vala

This will produce an executable file called `hello`.