Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Juanma Barranquero <address@hidden>
> Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2014 18:31:53 +0100
> Cc: Emacs developers <address@hidden>
> 
> It would be interesting to measure (somehow ;-) whether that "Emacs
> leverage" is enough to preserve GCC's importance. I mean, if using the
> clang libraries allows much powerful, developer-friendly environments
> for C/C++ programmers, do we think that a significant number of them
> will still choose GCC because of Emacs? If the answer is "yes",
> Richard's position strenghtens GCC without prejudice for Emacs. If the
> answer is "not", that position hurts Emacs without helping GCC.

I actually don't understand why are we talking about compilers as the
only viable infrastructure for the features being discussed.  IMNSHO,
it is bad design to ask users to install a particular compiler, be it
GCC or clang, just to be able to have decent editing capabilities for
a program source.  What next? shall we require LibreOffice to be able
to edit text files conveniently?

We already have elaborate infrastructure for this kind of features:
CEDET and in particular Semantic.  Moreover, we included CEDET in
Emacs several releases ago precisely _because_ we wanted to move in
the direction of making Emacs a better IDE.  If we need more of what
is in ECB and the upstream CEDET, we can bring that in.  This is IMO
the preferred direction: make Emacs features depend on nothing but
Emacs packages.  Then all this prolonged discussion about GCC vs clang
is a moot point, and we also gain independence of other projects'
priorities and policies as a nice bonus.

If we need policy decisions in this matter, _that_ is the only one
that should be made.  To me, it is almost a no-brainer; I wonder why
it is not clear-cut to others here.