Well as I blogged before I am making a Quickly template in Vala and it is going along nicely. I dont think its particularly ready for widespread use but ping me on IRC and ill walk you through how to use it or go to the class im doing next monday at 19.00 UTC in #ubuntu-classroom for Ubuntu app developer week. Ill prepare two classes depending on what people want 1. Using my Quickly Vala template and 2. a quick intro to Vala. So if I have some time to spare ill have some more content. Its my first class like that so I hope people turn up 
So thats the plug over and done with, now lets talk stuff ive learned along the way. 1. Vala doesnt have anything as cool as python-distutils-extra yet 2. Building sucks at the moment for new people.
So lets start with 1. python-distutils-extra detects dependencies used in python programs. One of the things in Vala is the need to use the –pkg switch with the dependency so the complier knows what to look for and obviously depends is needed for building too. So I really need something like what the quickly python templates already use.
For 2. is linked to 1. but anyway autotools and all of the other things you need to know about to build a package are completely ridiculous for app developers to deal with when doing the apps quickly (yes I did just use the name of Quickly itself to tie it in somewhere). So I heard about Buildj and im really interested in the idea. So I talked to the maintainer and hopefully we can get something really automated for 11.04 and maybe better than Quickly’s python templates (which are so awesome BTW). My aim is to have something that takes in 1 config file and builds the package from there. Then hopefully we can have some other cool stuff like pushing to a ppa or some more features.
So the outstanding issues are building building building and some more building and thats my focus for 11.04 for my Quickly Vala template.
Anyhow as always ping me (my nick is fagan) on #quickly on freenode and see where you can help if you want.