Re: [Patch] Add project.el command to replace symbol at point throughout project

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 12.01.2022 14:45, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > From: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
> > Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2022 05:46:53 +0200
> >
> > On 11.01.2022 15:10, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > > I think we should have such a command outside project.el as well.
> > > Would it be possible to base it on xref.el and related facilities, so
> > > that, for example, one could rename a symbol in all the files
> > > mentioned in TAGS table?
> >
> > We could add a command like xref-find-references-and-replace.
>
> That's what I had in mind.  Perhaps it would even make sense to have
> that command automatically adjust itself to a project, when invoked in
> the context of a project?

The conceptual problem with that is we have a number of commands which 
produce a list of matches in an Xref buffer:

xref-find-references,
xref-find-apropos,
project-find-regexp,
project-or-external-find-regexp

They're all fairly, so I won't think there's a change of implementing 
any meaningful automatic switching based on context.

Do we create the -and-replace counterpart only for xref-find-references?

There's also dired-do-find-regexp for which we have added said 
counterpart already (dired-do-find-regexp-and-replace), but that was 
primarily for backward compatibility of the UI.

> > Or you can do a search with M-? and then press 'r'. Have you tried that?
>
> At some point.  But I think someone who wants refactoring might have
> trouble discovering that, and a separate command will make that
> easier.

I rather remember the old recommendation to 'M-x find-grep-dired' 
followed by '% m RET .*' and 'M-x dired-do-query-replace-regexp', when 
one wanted to replace across the project. I think we're rather spoiled 
these days by comparison.

Anyway, if you're sure adding xref-find-references-and-replace will 
help, I've got no problem with that.