Is it better to add treesitter modes to core?

[Stefan Kangas]

Dmitry <dmitry@gutov.dev> writes:

> On Sun, Jan 7, 2024, at 2:34 PM, Philip Kaludercic wrote:
>> What I am wondering, is if this simplification were to take place, if it
>> would be possible to add ada-mode (or ada-ts-mode in that case) back to
>> the core?
> What is this fetish of adding everything to the core?
> ELPA is just one 'M-x package-install' away.

In Emacs, whatever real work you need to do, it's often the case that
"it's just one M-x package-install" away.  I see little reason for that.
In my ideal world, we should have basic editing support in place in
Emacs for typical tasks, and packages should provide extensions.  Most
users don't particularly enjoy starting work with installing a bunch of
extras.

Take a look at how much better things are elsewhere and weep:

    https://github.com/vim/vim/tree/master/runtime/syntax

Yes, vim is different, their job is easier and so on and so forth.  But
also consider that treesitter modes are looking far easier to maintain
than some of the behemoths we have sometimes had to write in ELisp.

We might not want _all_ language support in Emacs, but for the main
languages: why would we _not_ want it?  While I appreciate the
importance of workflow related arguments, from the end users point of
view, it really is a no-brainer which way is better.

This doesn't only apply to prog-modes, but also many text-modes.  Take a
look at toml-ts-mode.el for example, and tell me one reason why it
shouldn't be in Emacs core.  Markdown.  YAML.  Stuff like that.

> And Ada is niche enough that even the argument of having the popular
> languages supported OOtB doesn't work.

I think historical context matters here.  Ada is not exactly in vogue
these days, but it _is_ supported by GCC, and it has an ISO standard.
It's not some random novelty language for people that feel that
Typescript is not edgy enough, or anything like that.

We also happened to support it in Emacs for ages.