You could grab vala 0.16 by adding ppa:vala-team/ppa to your software sources.
I don't want to get you into "dependency hell" so if it turns out that
there are more packages that are too ancient in Precise, at some point
you may have to content yourself with simple-scan's version in the
repositories, or with my unmaintained branch. That's just the known
downside of LTS releases.
Good luck!
PS you're right about bzr clone, you should use bzr branch instead.
You could grab vala 0.16 by adding ppa:vala-team/ppa to your software sources.
I don't want to get you into "dependency hell" so if it turns out that
there are more packages that are too ancient in Precise, at some point
you may have to content yourself with simple-scan's version in the
repositories, or with my unmaintained branch. That's just the known
downside of LTS releases.
Good luck!
PS you're right about bzr clone, you should use bzr branch instead.