Re: [NonGNU ELPA] New package: sweep

[Eshel Yaron]

Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:

> Eshel Yaron <eshelshay.yaron@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:
>>
>>>> I would like to submit a new package to NonGNU ELPA, called "sweep":
>>>
>>> May I ask what the name is supposed to mean?
>>
>> Of course, but there's not a lot of depth to it, basically its derived
>> from "SWI-P(rolog)", with the "I" replaced with two "e"s for
>> "Emacs-Embedded".  So a possible backronym may be
>> "SW(I) Emacs-Embedded Prolog".
>
> I agree with RMS (<E1odDGZ-0005aw-79@fencepost.gnu.org>) that it might
> be nice to have a more indicative name, or at least something that
> includes "Prolog".  Mor eso because "sweep" makes me think of something
> that cleans.

I've given it some thought, and all in all I would like to keep the name
`sweep` for this project.  I do see however why this name may be
unhelpful for Emacs users who are not familiar with SWI-Prolog, or who
are looking for some "cleaning" package...  As a possible solution, I'd
be happy to change the name of the Elisp package to `sweeprolog` while
still referring to the project as a whole as `sweep` (e.g. in the
manual).  Does that sounds alright?


>>> From briefly skimming through the code I see that you define a new major
>>> that doesn't inherit from the default `prolog-mode'.  Is there a reason
>>> not to do so, or even implement sweep as a minor mode?
>>
>> I am not opposed to building on top of `prolog-mode`, but since
>> `sweep-mode` has access to the actual SWI-Prolog runtime including
>> notably its parser, we can (and do) provide better implementations for
>> many of the features of `prolog-mode`, at the cost of targeting only
>> SWI-Prolog where `prolog-mode` is more implementation agnostic.
>> For example, `sweep-mode` defines an `indent-line-function` which takes
>> into account the dynamic operator definitions that may occur in Prolog
>> code.
>> So currently I'm not sure what will be the benefits of inheriting
>> from `prolog-mode`, but I'll gladly revisit it as missing features in
>> `sweep-mode` pop up.  Does that make sense?
>
> The main advantage I see would be that anyone who uses `prolog-mode'
> could inherit their customisations when using sweep.  And it shouldn't
> be an issue if sweep-mode overrides most of what `prolog-mode' defines.

That makes sense, thanks.  I'll try deriving from `prolog-mode` and if
no unexpected issues come up I'll go with that.

> Is the error self-explanatory, in the sense that a user would be able to
> understand that SWI Prolog is outdated?

Currently it's a generic `file-missing` error, I'll improve on that.

> There are some packages that build software themselves
> (e.g. pdf-tools), but I don't think that issue has ever been solved in
> a clean and robust way.

Yes, I've also taken notes from the `vterm` package, which seems to take
a rather ad-hoc approach (see e.g. `vterm-module-compile`).


Best,
Eshel