Re: Clojure mode

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 27/08/2023 04:35, Richard Stallman wrote:
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> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>    > > What those people think should not be a crucial issue, because writing
>    > > a major mode to handle a language is not a big job.  We have dozens of
>    > > them in Emacs.  Lots of us here would be able to replace it.
>
>    > I would really not recommend increasing user confusion around which is
>    > the recommended major mode, and which one is not.
>
> That argument is too vague to support any particular conclusion.
>
> If we install a command called clojure-mode in the core Emacs, that
> will in a sense be the preferred one.  If you type M-x clojure-mode in
> Emacs, that is the one you'll get.
>
> We could avoid confusion with the NonGNU ELPA package by renaming
> that one.  Asking to load it using its new name would make it clear
> that that's the package you want.

NonGNU ELPA now has the package called clojure-ts-mode, it doesn't 
conflict. But it's specifically for use with tree-sitter grammar.

>    > That affects many third-party packages, as well as configuration
>    > snippets floating around the web.
>
> Sorry, I don't follow you.  Would you please spell out what you mean?

clojure-mode is an existing package with thousands (tens of thousands? 
millions?) users and certain existing functionality. Other (also 
third-party) packages rely on it for various functionality. It's not a 
bare-bones major mode with basic functionality only.

If we simply overtook the name but didn't reimplement it 1-to-1, that 
would break a lot of user configurations, many existing recipes "how to 
develop in Clojure with Emacs" posted around the web, not to mention 
that would be an insult toward the developers of the existing package.

There wouldn't be too much point in that either, because very few only 
use the major mode for development without additional niceties like CIDER.