I don't think it's very useful to maintain this list by hand. It's a duplication of information, and such things always invariably end up outdated and useless. I think it's more useful to write a program that collects this information automatically. The fact that you're finding this task boring and repetitive is enough of a hint that such a program can be written. I'd say start with a dolist of known major modes and a temp buffer, set the buffer in the major mode and check if there's a buffer-local value of flymake-diagnostic-backends. Also, given the advent of LSP, I think the trend is for Flymake to be chiefly useful when connected with something like Eglot. Not exclusively so, but rather predominantly so. João