Re: Mode names for C-like tree-sitter modes

[Theodor Thornhill <theo@thornhill.no>]

On 15 November 2022 05:17:10 CET, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
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>  > I think it’s fair to make C, C++ and Java modes independent,
>
>Could you say that more clearly?  What would be independent of what?
>

We now have several modes for the same language. The tree-sitter variant of c-mode is c-ts-mode, with its own set of functionality. The Cc mode modes "own" the namespace which is the most intuitive to use - c-mode. We have discussed how to deal with the naming, and all approaches has its ups and downs. If we were to merge the codebase between the modes, and allowing the name to be the same we would blend two very different approaches and cause, in my opinion, unnecessary complication. Another downside is that cc mode set a lot of before/after-hooks, caches etc that are simply _not_ needed in the tree-sitter variant. Thus it makes sense not to blend them. 

Even though cc modes offer some functionality not present in the tree-sitter variant yet i think it's not the best idea to enable them side by side for performance reasons. Tree-sitter offers around an order of magnitude or more better performance, and losing some of that without very good reasons would be a shame.

So by independent we mean two modes for the C language that doesn't share any code. Two files, no requires or inherits between.

>                                                                 since
>  > all the cc-mode options are invalidated when we use
>  > tree-sitter.
>
>Can you please describe the problem?
>

Most is hopefully described above, but I think a better word is "unnecessary", not invalidated.

I hope that's a little clearer?