Re: Bad moves with xref-find-definitions

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 04/26/2015 01:44 PM, Vitalie Spinu wrote:

> Me too.

But you're willing to prepend `M-3' every time you want to look up 
something in Elisp? That's not really ideal either.

> Ho about having multiple configurable "levels" of xref to be accessed
> with numeric prefixes (M-1,M-2 etc). Then one can have M-3 M-. to always
> access elisp references, M-4 M-. to access current tags and M-. for
> whatever the current mode thinks is the best.

That's not bad, but it sounds like too much micromanagement to me. In 
any other editor, it would be accompanied by a dedicated UI, at least. I 
don't know if even Helm would cut it.

So, I'd rather see this as a minor mode. Maybe a package in ELPA?

Personally, I expect "serious" backends to either replace the need for 
etags entirely, or delegate to them and collect the results internally.

> Would be nice to be able to set the "level" dynamically. For example, if
> I have a related code which I want to consult only rarely, I build a tag
> table for that code and hook it immediately on M-8.

That new minor mode could offer a capability to simply switch to a 
different source, temporarily, or just for one command. And keep the 
history of already-configured sources.

A source configuration would not just be limited to the xref- vars, 
though. If you want to consult certain tag tables only sometimes, those 
sources would store the value of tags-table-list, for instance. And 
restore it upon quitting.

>   > How about `xref-prompt-for-identifier', to mirror CIDER's option name?
>
> Sounds good.

Added.