[Pkg-vala-maintainers] Bug#672500: valac: default valac version does not fully support Debian's GLib version

[Simon McVittie]

Package: valac
Version: 0.14.2-2
Severity: wishlist

"apt-get install valac" results in the valac and vapigen alternatives
pointing to Vala 0.14, which is not the latest stable version. In
particular, its vapigen version can't deal with bindings containing
GBytes, which is new in GLib 2.32:

> TelepathyGLib-0.12.gir:27672.34-27672.34: error: The type name `GLib.Bytes'
> could not be found
>             <type name="GLib.Bytes"/>
>                                  ^

Since AM_PROG_VALAC only checks $PATH for valac, not valac-whatever, I
think it would be a good idea for the valac dependency package and the
default value of the valac alternative to point to 0.16.

Packages that need the newer valac can work around this with:

    ./configure ... VALAC=/usr/bin/valac-0.16 VAPIGEN=/usr/bin/vapigen-0.16

(it seems it has to be a path containing "/").

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages valac depends on:
ii  valac-0.14  0.14.2-2

valac recommends no packages.

valac suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information