Possibility of moving syntax definitions into a separate repository

[crbelaus]

There are some other language support extensions for different editors. Some of those editors directly (Visual Studio Code) or indirectly (Visual Studio Code or Atom) can use .tmLanguage syntax files.

Currently there are multiple Elixir extensions for those editors:

• Visual Studio Code: vscode-elixir, vscode-elixir-ls, elixir-language-support
• Atom: ide-elixir, language-elixir (maintained by this same organization)

Each of those packages currently maintains its own, incompatible and different syntax definition.

It could be possible to split the current .tmLanguage grammars into their own repository that could then be reused by different editor support packages (including this one).

The good part is that there would be a single source of truth for the Elixir grammar definition across editors, unifying the maintenance efforts.

I could make the changes myself and submit a PR, but I prefer to discuss it first to see if it would make sense.

[crbelaus]

I thought about opening this discussion in ElixirForum instead of here since it may reach a wider audience. Finally I decided to discuss it here since the maintainers opinion is the most important one.

[josevalim]

It is worth noting that those editors may have slightly different behaviours. For example, over the last issues there was some struggle to support both textmate and sublime text due to small differences and those are two that official support .tmlanguage.

[josevalim]

And before I forget, thanks for the proposal @crbelaus!

[RedCMD]

here's my VSCode extension to help with authoring TextMate grammars https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=RedCMD.tmlanguage-syntax-highlighter

it shows many of the incompatibilities with VSCode's and GitHub's TextMate engines (sublime soon™️)