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Installation Guide ​

Vala is available on multiple operating systems. Follow the installation instructions below for your operating system.

Linux ​

Vala is available on a large variety of Linux distributions. You can also install other development files for libraries to use with vala.

Fedora ​

Development files usually come in *-devel packages, for example libgee-devel.

shell
sudo dnf install vala

Debian ​

You need to install *-dev packages, to get development files on Debian.

shell
sudo apt install valac

Arch Linux ​

shell
sudo pacman -S vala

ALT Linux ​

Development library packages are named as lib*-devel. Example: libgee-devel.

shell
apt-get install vala

*BSD ​

First, you install the port:

shell
cd /usr/ports/lang/vala/ && make install clean

And then you can add the package:

shell
pkg install vala

Windows ​

MSYS2 ​

MSYS2 provides a Linux-like environment for Windows. First install MSYS2, then install vala with the following commands:

shell
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-pkg-config
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-vala

You also need to install all the libraries that you want to use individually.

Windows Subsystem for Windows (WSL) ​

Install a Linux distribution in WSL and then continue with the installation instructions for Linux.

Mac OS X ​

To install Vala on Mac OS X, you can use brew, a package manager for OS X:

shell
brew install vala

Verifying the Installation ​

If you installed everything correctly, if enter this line in your terminal:

shell
valac --version

A line like this should be printed in the terminal:

shell
Vala x.xx.x

If you don't see any version number and instead see something like along the lines of The command 'valac' is not recognised or any other error, this means that Vala has not been installed correctly.

Please ensure that you've followed the installation instructions above and try again.

If you are struggling to either:

  • Install Vala
  • Install the version of Vala that you require

Try asking the community for help.