GNU bug report logs - #66050
Making perl-mode.el obsolete

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From: Jens Schmidt <jschmidt4gnu <at> vodafonemail.de>
To: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 66050 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Harald Jörg <haj <at> posteo.de>, Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>
Subject: bug#66050: Making perl-mode.el obsolete
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2023 18:34:46 +0200

Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com> 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.

There has been a thread on emacs-devel recently on that:

  https://yhetil.org/emacs-devel/16da6ae7-66d8-fc43-cb84-6d104d3a2ef8 <at> mavit.org.uk/

plus my opinion:

  https://yhetil.org/emacs-devel/4d18a051-07d5-fba7-1c36-ae2eb72bf71c <at> vodafonemail.de/

which still holds.

But I can see your points, of course.

cperl-mode already has some big-config-sweep-knobs, like it seems
(`cperl-hairy').  It would certainly be nice to also have some
"make-things-work-like-in-perl-mode-but-sans-its-bugs" knob if it came
to obsoleting perl-mode.  For me, the most important things to cover
here would be a nearly-identical look-and-feel for indentation and
syntax highlighting.

One could even imagine to flip that knob automatically when `cperl-mode'
gets started as `perl-mode'.

> - Instead of maintaining perl-mode.el, I'd rather see that people worked
>   on a new perl-ts-mode.el.  From a web search, more than one treesitter
>   grammar exist; I have no idea which one is the most promising or how
>   mature any of them are.

+1, with the same restrictions on indentation and syntax highlighting.
After 25+ years of using one mode you just get so used to its
look-and-feel.

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