Re: Emacs Ada mode vs Ada 2012 syntax

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org> writes:

> (also posted to emacs-ada-mode mailing list, partly as a test of
> which place is better for this type of discussion)

I'd be glad to reply to the mailing list instead, but I saw this first!

> I've started using some Ada 2012 syntax, in particular if expressions,
> and it confuses the Emacs Ada mode indentation engine.
>
> So it's time to think about adding that syntax to the engine.
>
> However, as I've mentioned before, the current Emacs Ada mode
> indentation engine is a horrible mess of heuristic code, so I really
> don't want to mess with it.
>
> One option is to totally rewrite that part of Emacs Ada mode, replacing
> it with a semantic browser based engine implemented in elisp. Emacs has
> support in general for this approach; several other language modes use
> it. We could possibly get hints from the GPS implementation (I'm
> assuming it does Ada 2012 by now).
>
> Another option is to try to abstract the Ada implementation of the
> indentation engine from GPS, and arrange for Emacs to use it, via
> process or function calls. I don't think that would be easy, and it
> could be too slow.
>
> Another option is to give up on Emacs. I don't want to do that, but if
> there are not many people using it, maybe it's time.
>
> Opinions? Offers of help?

I was going to suggest using gnatpp (well, really 'gnat pretty' if you
want to use a project file - why???!) but of course that only works if
the file is syntactically and semantically correct - which isn't going
to be the case while developing code.

My elisp skills aren't of the greatest, but I'd certainly be happy to
brush them up and help.