Using Libraries

Using a library in Vala is largely automated if you use the valac compiler. The Vala specific library files make up what is known as a package. You tell the compiler that a package is needed by your program as follows:

$ valac --pkg gee-1.0 test.vala

This command means your program can use any of the definitions in the gee-1.0.vapi file, and also any in any of the packages that gee-1.0 depends on. These dependencies would be be listed in gee-1.0.deps if there were any. In this example valac is set to build all the way to binary, and will therefore incorporate information from pkg-config to link the correct libraries. This is why the pkg-config names are also used for Vala package names.

Packages are generally used with namespaces, but they are not technically related. This means that even though your application is built with reference to the package, you must still include the required using statements in each file as appropriate, or else use the fully qualified names of all symbols.

It is also possible to treat a local library (one that is not installed) as a package. For comparison, Vala itself uses an internal version of Gee. When valac is built it creates a VAPI file of this internal library and uses it roughly as follows:

$ valac --vapidir ../gee --pkg gee ...

For details on how to generate this library, see the next section or the example.