Re: Refactoring flymake.el

[Dmitry Gutov]

Hey João,

On 8/17/17 5:40 PM, João Távora wrote:

> Specifically, I'm thinking of separating its UI and from its
> diagnostics-generating backends. Currently the latter rely purely on
> lanching external processes and examining their output, but recent
> experimentations with the LSP (Language Server Protocol) showed that to
> not always be the case. Another example is Elisp itself, which is
> syntax-checkable without an external tool.

*thumbs up*

> If you are thinking: "Hasn't flycheck.el done all those things
> already", the answer is probably yes, but flycheck has been around for
> some time and isn't in Emacs, whereas flymake.el is. Anyway, that is a
> whole different topic. I believe flymake.el's flaws can be fixed and it
> can be made as good as, if not better than, flycheck.el.
>
> I'm also committed to maintaining backward compatibility with the many
> flymake.el configurations out in the wild.

That's great, but ultimately not so important, IMO. We can drop it in 
some future release, with the usual deprecation period.

> 4. Checking in again to see if it there's still interest :-)

Since Flycheck's author basically made sure we can't use it in Emacs or 
GNU ELPA, we do need an alternative.

Very happy someone is working on it, especially someone with your Elisp 
experience.