Re: On the stability of Xref

[Dmitry Gutov]

Hi Philip,

On 22.04.2021 12:57, Philip Kaludercic wrote:

> I wanted to ask what the consensus is on the stability of the Xref
> interface. xref.el starts with the unsettling warning
>
>          ;; NOTE: The xref API is still experimental and can change in major,
>          ;; backward-incompatible ways.  Everyone is encouraged to try it, and
>          ;; report to us any problems or use cases we hadn't anticipated, by
>          ;; sending an email to emacs-devel, or `M-x report-emacs-bug'.
>
> that scares some people away from using the mode (see for example [0]).

Looking at the discussion, that sounded more like a justification than 
the real reason, but...

> git blame tells me that that this note was added more than 5 years ago,
> and I'm not sure how much has changed in the interface since then.

...it's high time to remove it anyway. And I have now done so.

> At the same time, several external packages have implemented the Xref
> interface, including the aforementioned dumb-jump, that is among the
> most used packages on MELPA[1]. Eglot and lsp-mode both implement the
> interface as is.

Since a number of highly visible packages rely on it, the changes need 
to be done more carefully already, and if I we ever get around to doing 
a major redesign/rewrite, it would probably be better incubated as an 
external package. In GNU ELPA, at least.

Thanks for the reminder,
Dmitry.