Subject: Re: bug#66050: Making perl-mode.el obsolete

From: Harald Jörg <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2023 00:44:00 +0000

Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]> writes:

>> I don't think it makes sense for us to spend our meager resources
>> maintaining two major modes for Perl.  I would like to gauge what people
>> think about obsoleting perl-mode.el.
>
> I think I sadly agree.
>
> I've been a supporter of `perl-mode` because when I had to edit Perl
> files, I always found `cperl-mode` not to be to my taste (too different
> from other Emacs major modes). ...

Are there conventions or general expectations for major modes?  I would
love to make cperl-mode "less exotic", but Perl *is* a bit exotic, and
the "Major Mode Conventions" seem to be more or less obeyed (they cover
developer conventions, not user expectations).  Both modes derive from
prog-mode, and both have no built-in completion nor ElDoc support... but
Perl language servers can add these to some extent.

Another convention is documented in the "Levels of Font Lock", but neither
of the Perl modes makes use of the three levels as recommended.

> [...]
> I think the best option is to obsolete `perl-mode` and to encourage
> people to report bugs against `cperl-mode` when they find it doesn't
> work as well as their beloved `perl-mode` :-)

+1
-- 
Cheers,
haj