Re: xref-query-replace-in-results error message after xref-find-definitions, was: Re: bug#58158: 29.0.50; [overlay] Interval tree iteration considered harmful

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2022 19:41:35 +0300
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
> 
> >> This would do nothing for custom values of
> >> xref-show-definitions-function, but should remove most of the confusion
> >> with default configuration. And some non-default ones as well (lsp-mode
> >> doesn't change the value of xref-show-definitions-function).
> >>
> >> If the docstring of xref-show-definitions-function looks okay to you, we
> >> can use its vocabulary.
> >>
> >>     Cannot replace in definition search results
> >>
> >> should cover xref-find-definitions, lsp-find-definition and
> >> lsp-find-declaration. Wouldn't help with lsp-find-implementation, though
> >> (its results are also questionable WRT renaming because they don't
> >> include all references either), but it won't make it worse.
> > 
> > Hmm... maybe
> > 
> >    Cannot perform global replacement in find-definition results
> > 
> > Another idea would be for the error message to be constructed
> > dynamically, and include the precise command that produced the Xref
> > buffer, if xref.el could record that in some buffer-local variable.
> 
> I suppose it could. But then some backend (such as lsp or possibly 
> eglot) might return 'definitions' results in format suitable for 
> replacements, and that will mean that one can replace in 
> xref-find-definitions's results, just with some backends but not others.
> 
> And with that, the error message
> 
>    Cannot do global replacement using results of \\[xref-find-definitions]
> 
> shown to the same user at a different time (perhaps when they're editing 
> Elisp) will become a lie.
> 
> And then, okay, we could try to add the name of the backend symbol to 
> the error message as well, but it's much harder to capture that one, 
> especially given that not every command using Xref output will go 
> through xref-backend-functions (project-find-regexp is a counter-example).

So is this:

  Cannot perform global replacement in find-definition results

the best that can be done?  It sounds like no alternative is
significantly better.