Re: Why tree-sitter instead of Semantic? (was Re: CC Mode with font-lock-maximum-decoration 2)

[Eric Ludlam]

On 8/9/22 10:14 PM, Po Lu wrote:
> Lynn Winebarger <owinebar@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > I'm curious, though, as to why Semantic/CEDET seems to have been
> > superceded by external solutions like tree-sitter or LSP-based
> > (non-emacs) servers.  One of the draws of Emacs for me is the
> > "batteries included" nature of it having Emacs Lisp built in.  Is
> > there a downside to using Semantic as the basis for improving my
> > derived mode that's non-obvious?
>
> I think Semantic lost intertia after the original author lost interest
> in it (or left for unrelated reasons, I don't remember which.)

I eventually stopped pushing on CEDET for a few reasons - but a big one 
was that I don't code professionally anymore, and trying to wrestle the 
legal paperwork from my company and merges between repositories 
necessitated by those restrictions was just too troublesome.

I was also frequently surprised by how hard it was to get CEDET to 'just 
work' well enough for everyone to use it as intended, and how often 
people just jumped over to simpler one-off external tools because the 
full suite way CEDET works was too heavy a lift.  That in turn resulted 
in not a lot of contributors to help support/improve those workflows. 
Tools like LSP also became good enough where there was no way I could 
keep up.  I had hoped to pull data from external tools like lsp into the 
framework CEDET used, but again the simpler one-off tools were too 
appealing to that audience.

Overall, I think that is fine though - having many projects 
experimenting with different techniques, and having the best solution 
win is the benefit of free software.  Developing CEDET back when it was 
the only game it town was a good time with many good people helping, and 
I am glad to have been a part of that, and I'm glad CEDET is still 
useful in many cases.

Eric