Re: Consistency for xref-show-{xrefs,definitions}-function

[Daniel Martín]

Gabriel do Nascimento Ribeiro <gabriel376@hotmail.com> writes:

> I noticed that the options 'xref-show-xrefs-function' and
> 'xref-show-definitions-function' are not symmetrical.
>
> The defcustom for 'xref-show-xrefs-function' does not have type choices
> as 'xref-show-definitions-function' has. Furthermore, it's quite strange
> to configure it as follow:
>
> (setq xref-show-xrefs-function
>       'xref-show-definitions-completing-read)
>
> I suggest to create similar functions for 'xref-show-xrefs-function',
> which at this moment can be just aliases but can be independent
> functions in the future, if necessary:
>   - xref-show-xrefs-buffer
>   - xref-show-xrefs-buffer-at-bottom
>   - xref-show-xrefs-completing-read
>

I agree with your viewpoint, but do we need that much complexity? IIUC,
those functions mainly receive a list of xrefs and present them in a
certain way.  I'm not sure why we should have xref-show-xrefs-* and
xref-show-definitions-* (even if they are aliases).  I feel this
duplication won't scale well (imagine if we add support for any other
code relationship to xref).

Could we have a single implementation for each presentation style? That
would reduce confusion, and xref-show-xrefs-function and
xref-show-definitions-function may have different defaults to provide
the best possible UX for each operation.