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I've just found Nice Manual Page how to install latest MinGW/GTK+3.0/Vala-git instruments under windows.

I'll make a copy-paste of the page to prevent deletion.

  1. Run “mingw-builds-install.exe”, select “x32” as Architecture, “win32” as Threads and “sjlj” as Exception:
  2. Continue installation, I placed my to “C:\mingw-builds”.
  3. Download the latest “external-binary-packages” from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingwbuilds/files/external-binary-packages/ and copy the “msys” directory to “C:\mingw-builds\mingw32”.
  4. Open “‪C:\mingw-builds\mingw32\msys\etc\fstab” with Notepad++ and add the line “C:\mingw-builds\mingw32 /mingw”.
  5. Download the Win32 GTK+ “all-in-one bundle” from http://www.gtk.org/download/win32.php and extract it's content to “C:\mingw-builds\mingw32”.
  6. Create a new shortcut, e.g. on the Desktop and set the location to “C:\mingw-builds\mingw32\msys\bin\mintty.exe /bin/bash -l” in order to get a nice shell.
  7. Download the latest source tarball from https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Vala/Release and extract it to “C:\mingw-builds\mingw32\msys\home\{Your Username}”.
  8. Run the Mintty shortcut you created in step 7 and switch with “cd” to the vala source directory.
  9. Now you should be able to run the fallowing three commands without any issues:

    Building and installing Vala

    ./configure --prefix=/mingw --host=i686-w64-mingw32
    make
    make install
  10. Run “valac” to see if it works:

    Test Vala

    $ valac --version
    Vala 0.22.1
  11. Go to “Control Panel\System and Security\System” → “Advanced system settings” → “Environment Variables” and add this to your “Path” system variable:

    $PATH

    C:\mingw-builds\mingw32\bin
  12. Create somewhere a file called “hello.vala” and paste in this:

    Hello world!

    using Gtk;
     
    int main (string[] args) {
        Gtk.init (ref args);
     
        var window = new Window ();
        window.title = "First GTK+ Program";
        window.border_width = 10;
        window.window_position = WindowPosition.CENTER;
        window.set_default_size (350, 70);
        window.destroy.connect (Gtk.main_quit);
     
        var button = new Button.with_label ("Click me!");
        button.clicked.connect (() => {
            button.label = "Thank you";
        });
     
        window.add (button);
        window.show_all ();
     
        Gtk.main ();
        return 0;
    }
  13. Open a normal Windows CMD, cd to the location of the file and run “valac –pkg gtk+-3.0 -X -mwindows hello.vala”
  14. Execute the compiled “hello.exe”, you should see your first Vala GTK+ window, congratulation :

A lot of thanks to Hendrik! :)