Re: Emacs rewrite in a maintainable language

[David Kastrup]

Oleh Krehel <address@hidden> writes:

> 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.

No, because such a subset is neither documented independently nor
enforced by the toolchain.  You'll not find any tutorials written for it
nor standard documents describing it.  It's ad hoc.  The set of C macros
used for Elisp interfacing is ad-hoc as well, but the C language
features used for implementing them are a small, well-known set, and
knowing that, the Emacs sources tell the rest of the story if you cannot
get them from anywhere else.

-- 
David Kastrup