Re: Adding support for xref jumping to headers/interfaces

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 05/03/2023 23:04, João Távora wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 5, 2023, 20:40 Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru 
> <mailto:dgutov@yandex.ru>> wrote:
>
>     On 05/03/2023 22:32, João Távora wrote:
>      > To clarify, i think the thin commands and the keybinds should be
>     in the
>      > major modes, but these commands should be thin and use xref as a
>      > library. And the backend should be Eglot's,  if it happens to be
>      > managing the buffer via LSP, else out can be whatever the major
>     modes
>      > sets up.
>
>     xref-find-declarations should be bound by major modes? Which modes?
>
>
> No, you misunderstand. I wrote "commands and keybinds should be in the 
> major mode". Xref-find-declarations should not exist, because 
> declaration is not a universal thing common to all languages. That was 
> Helmut's point AFAIU, and i agree with it.

Okay, let's follow on with that idea.

> Which modes? The ones where "declaration" is a thing.

So we'll have a dozen different commands called 'xxx-find-declarations' 
which will be implemented the same (?) way? Bound to the same key sequence?

If there a particular point to doing that? Do we expect other modes to 
reuse the same binding to do something else? That will reduce UI 
consistency, at the very least.

> IOW xref should try to stay language-agnostic, but provide common 
> framework for language-specific things like major modes to reach 
> backends like Eglot or anything else

Most programming languages have something that corresponds to the term 
"declaration".

> Mind you the same point made for xref can be made about LSP, 
> language-agnostic on paper, but many a language-specific concept poorly 
> disguised in there. But I see no reason to copy that flaw.

I don't mind the idea of extensibility (and packages like lsp-mode do 
this already: IIRC they have commands called lsp-find-declarations and 
lsp-find-implementations).

But insofar as languages do have shared syntactic concepts, I don't see 
why we wouldn't want to include more common ones.