Etags.el (was: UI inconveniences with M-.)

[Stefan Monnier]

[ Moving this to emacs-devel.  ]

>> I really think the etags backend should only return data when the TAGS
>> file is in one of the parents of the current directory.
> That goes back to the "working on several projects" discussion of
> yore.  Specifically, you might be working on two related packages
> (e.g., one calls the other) that live in two different directories.

And as mentioned back then, this would be solved by providing a way for
the user to tell etags.el about the link between those two projects.
For the case where this link only exists during the running session, we
could simply use the existing "visit-tags-table" functionality where you
can add a TAGS file to the one(s) already loaded, so the new
functionality would behave similarly to the old one.

>> And it should also be able to keep several independent TAGS tables
>> opened for different projects in different directory trees.
> It already does that.

No it doesn't.  It lets you use the union of a set of TAGS tables, which
means that the TAGS tables of independent projects pollute each other.


        Stefan