Re: find-file-project

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 01/09/2016 03:18 PM, Stephen Leake wrote:

> What is the alternative?
>
> Only the user knows which directories in load-path should be treated
> recursively.

I don't see the harm in treating all of them recursively.

> That assumes only CEDET is handled recursively; if I add another project
> that has recursive dirs, I'll have to add that to this function.

This is unnecessarily complex, I think.

> If "locate.el" has duplicates, but I don't know that, then I start by
> typing "loc", and the completion shows both completions, with
> disambiguating suffix.

And here's the problem: the user is obliged to refer to your list of 
disambiguated entries, to pick the right one. It's harder to guess, in 
advance, what I can type. Which makes the process slower than it has to be.

> If the first one is the one I want, I hit <ret>. otherwise I hit <right>
> <ret>.

<right>? Are you using ido-mode? I was discussing how it looks with the 
default completion mechanism.

If you're using icomplete-mode, or ivy-mode, you can also M-x 
project-find-file now, type locate.el, and pick either of the two 
matches quickly, using C-./C-, or C-n/C-p (respectively) followed by RET.

> That's the same pattern needed to distinguish "filter.el" from
> "filters.el", except the disambiguation in the first case happens to
> include directories.

Right, and in any case, I can admit that for files with unique base 
names your approach yields fewer false positives than fuzzy matching 
across full relative names.

On the other hand, I find being able to see the relative names rather 
useful. E.g. I may remember the actual base file name incorrectly; 
looking at the directory the file with the given name is in, can help me 
avoid the wrong choice and recall the right name.

> If we used prefix directories, there might be a problem; depends on the
> details.

IME, this approach works fairly well.

> On the other hand, with your implementation, I'm required to type
> "ede/locate.el" vs "locate.el" to find these two files. So I have a
> problem; I don't want to have to memorize all the files in ede, srecode,
> and semantic!

One ends up memorizing directory names anyway, in the course of working 
on a project.

But no, you don't have to memorize them: you type 'locate.el', press TAB 
(or RET), and see the directory names in the completions list.