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As we are not so crazy busy this month, I finally get time to write about one the  key tools that we developed to enhance our development process.

Back in 2010, We built a desktop application called app.Builder.js, written in seed (webkit+gnome). It's main purpose was to enable the rapid development of RooJS applications (a fork of ExtJS). It worked wonders over the years, enabling us to build and prototype applications quickly, and continually improve on them.

While it worked well, due to the nature of Javascript bindings into C, the occasional code problem would cause a complete crash. As most of the code is dependant on the javascript bindings, and gir files that define them. It also became a little troublesome to maintain, extend as it was dependent on the availability of gir bindings for new widgets.

Around mid 2014, It was decided to port the code from Javascript to Vala. Being a relative new-commer to Vala, we first tried porting our Gitlive application, which monitors the filesystem for changes and instantly commit's and pushes all changes. This relatively small project gave us the skills set ready to rebuild application builder in vala.