Re: Emacs rewrite in a maintainable language

[Oleh Krehel]

Óscar Fuentes <address@hidden> writes:

> Oleh Krehel <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> I think slowly moving the Emacs C core to C++ is a good idea.  The two
>> languages are supposed to be largely compile-compatible, i.e. g++ can
>> understand what was meant for gcc.
>
> Many times, while looking at the Emacs C sources, I thought "this would
> be much simpler to understand and modify with C++." Furthermore, I would
> volunteer to work on it.
>
> However, there are two factors against it:
>
>  * If the rewrite happens, using a better language than C++ is
>    desirable. C++ is better than C, but it sucks too. Developing our own
>    subset of Elisp that can be compiled to native code and can
>    inter-operate with C looks more attractive.

C++ doesn't suck. If C is good, than a subset of C++ that is C with
constants, templates and classes, but without polymorphism or operator
overloading is a better C - also good.

>  * Current maintainers are not likely to welcome the idea, for several
>    legitimate reasons ("don't know C++", "I dislike it", etc). And
>    Stallman would forbide it alright ("C++ in my Emacs? No way!" :-)

I don't know if this was ever brought up.

>    Making the pill easier to swallow by restricting ourselves to the
>    simpler C++ features greatly diminishes its effectiveness too.

I disagree. The features would be the current C features, only with
better type checking and encapsulation.

    Oleh