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bug#43086: [PATCH] Allow tags backend to not query for TAGS file
From: |
Dmitry Gutov |
Subject: |
bug#43086: [PATCH] Allow tags backend to not query for TAGS file |
Date: |
Sat, 5 Sep 2020 03:45:17 +0300 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/68.10.0 |
Hi!
On 28.08.2020 15:50, Philip K. wrote:
the xref backend for etags can be annoying at times, especially in
combination with other backends. This patch should improve the
situation, by allowing the user to configure how and when the etags
backend is activated. The new user option etags-query-file would allow
the backend to never query a TAGS file, or conditionally, depending on
the existence of a TAGS file (in which case it can also be automatically
loaded).
This is a interesting patch, but it calls for some discussion:
- The possible values all look pretty clever, but there are a lot of
them! Do we expect them all to be in demand? Ideally, I'd only leave 2-3
of them, to reduce the number of workflows we need to care about. The
rest could probably be set up in individual user configurations in
find-file-hook (like Projectile does).
- The variable name implies it affects how etags.el works globally, but
the actual effect seems limited to the xref backend function. We should
either rename it to something like etags-xref-query-file, or consider
having it affect tags-completion-at-point-function as well. Maybe
find-tag too. But given that tags-completion-at-point-function has for a
long time behaved in the "never query" fashion, perhaps the easiest and
most backward-compatible option is the former.
- One current persistent annoyance is that currently
xref-find-references doesn't work well in many files where the xref
backend is the default one (etags) when ido-mode or icomplete-mode are
enabled because it prompts for the tags file to do identifier
completion. I wonder if the "no query" option will help with this, too.
I could imagine this might be extended to allow an auto-generate option,
but that feature seems out of scope of this patch, and probably would
require some interoperation with project.el.
Indeed. Actually, I have an old, WIP patch for tag file auto-generation
which, yes, uses project.el. I can post it again if you're curious.
- bug#43086: [PATCH] Allow tags backend to not query for TAGS file,
Dmitry Gutov <=