Re: Call for volunteers: add tree-sitter support to major modes

[Po Lu]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Yes, more of an Emacs 30 thing, so 2024-ish.
>
> That is, during the next year, I'm guessing that we'll be gaining
> tree-sitter support for all the major programming languages, and when
> that is better than what we already have, we should consider making
> tree-sitter a prerequisite for Emacs (and these modes) and rapidly phase
> out the old code.

I and many others will _very_ strongly object to removing the build
without tree-sitter.  Emacs has never needed a non-system library to
edit text, and that should not start now.

On X, we even support the build without XCB, as even though it has been
ubitous for decades, it is not specified in any document and cannot be
implemented by third parties.  Unlike Xlib, which is part of the
specifications for release 6 of the X Window System, version 11,
published by the X Consortium.

> It's also a question of how much user breakage we'll tolerate/aim for.
> That is, there's a gazillion tuning knobs all over the modes to tweak
> stuff that will be rendered obsolete by tree-sitter, and which people
> may be fond of.

It will certainly break a lot.  Last I heard tree-sitter itself has
problems with complex macro constructs in C and C++ code.

CC Mode has less, because it is too dumb to try to parse them.