AUTOVALA

IMPORTANT: Autovala has been migrated to Gitlab

https://gitlab.com/rastersoft/autovala

Autovala is a program and a library designed to help in the creation of projects with Vala and CMake. It also has support for Genie.

Now also has experimental Meson build system support.

The idea is quite simple: CMake is very powerful, but writting the CMakeLists files is boring and repetitive. Why not let the computer create them, by guessing what to do with each file? And if, at the end, there are mistakes, let the user fix them in an easy way, and generate the final CMakeLists files.

This is what Autovala does. This process is done in three steps:

* First, Autovala checks all the folders and files, and writes a project
file with the type of each file
* It also peeks the source files to determine which Vala packages they need,
and generate automagically that list
* After that (and after allowing the user to check, if (s)he wishes, the
project file), it uses that project file to generate the needed CMakeLists
files

Autovala greatly simplifies the process of working with Vala because:

* Automatically determines the vala packages and libraries needed to compile
and run the project, by inspecting the source code
* Automatically generates the .vapi and pkg-config files for libraries
* Automatically determinates the final destination for an icon, by checking
its type (svg or png) and, in the later case, its size.
* Automatically generates manpages from text files in several possible input
format (markdown, html, latex...).
* Greatly simplifies creating libraries in Vala, or a project with a binary
that uses a library defined in the same project.
* Automatically generates the metadata files to create .DEB and .RPM packages.
* Easily integrates unitary tests for each binary in the project.
* Can generate automatically DBUS bindings by using the DBUS introspection
capabilities.
* Automatically generates the list of source files for GETTEXT.
* Simplifies mixing C and Vala source files.

COMPILING AUTOVALA

Details about how to compile autovala are available in the INSTALL.md file.

You also can compile the plugins for Gedit and Scratch Text Editor, which are in the folders gedit_plugin and scratch_plugin. You can find inside the instructions.

USING AUTOVALA

The DOC folder contains the Wiki dumped in HTML format. Just open the index.html file with your browser, or go to the Wiki section in GitHub, and enjoy.

CONTACTING THE AUTHOR

Sergio Costas Rodriguez
[email protected]
http://www.rastersoft.com
https://gitlab.com/rastersoft/autovala