Re: Ada-mode to be abandoned?

[Daniel Mendler via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org>]

Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> writes:

> Daniel Mendler via "Emacs development discussions."
> <emacs-devel@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> In the case of Heex I see this package header:
>>
>> ;;; heex-ts-mode.el --- Major mode for Heex with tree-sitter support -*- lexical-binding: t; -*-
>> ;; ...
>> ;; This package provides `heex-ts-mode' which is a major mode for editing
>> ;; HEEx files that uses Tree Sitter to parse the language.
>>
>> Then there is this NEWS entry:
>>
>> *** New major mode 'heex-ts-mode'.
>> A major mode based on the tree-sitter library for editing HEEx files.
>>
>> This information is not helpful for a newcomer. On the other hand if you
>> are already an Elixir/Heex user, it should not pose a difficulty for you
>> to find the appropriate packages on GNU ELPA.
>
> Why would newcomers be perusing NEWS?  They will just open their heex
> file and see that they already have syntax highlighting.

The information here could be slightly more helpful. On the other hand
every bit of added information has a small associated cost, it adds a
little noise, which makes it harder to filter out the information
relevant for the user. This mirrors the point raised by Dmitry earlier,
where he mentioned that as a developer, he has to scroll over a lot of
mails and diffs related to packages, which could also be developed and
distributed on GNU ELPA.

I don't have a particular opinion about Elixir/Heex. Keeping it in core
or on ELPA are both reasonable alternatives. From my understanding,
Elixir is not a fringe language. My opinion is different in cases like
Bicep. It has a specialised use case, promotes Azure and may also become
obsolete when Azure changes. (Sorry that I am again conflating the
discussions of Ada, Elixir and Bicep.)

If one looks at lisp/progmodes there are a few modes which seem mainly
of historical interest. While VSCode may be a good example for out of
the box support, I believe they would also drop support for something
quickly if it falls out of interest. This is not a good thing and I like
the Emacs backward compatibility story much more. But when something
gets added one probably wants to be sure that it will stay useful for a
longer time and that it is useful for a significant fraction of the
users.

Daniel