Re: Unified project interface

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 06/05/2015 04:03 PM, Stephen Leake wrote:

> 1) You are editing a LaTeX file containing documentation for a Python
> module implemented in Python and C++. You want to find all mentions/references
> related to feature "foo", in LaTeX, Python, and C++ source files. So you
> invoke project-find-regexp, which searches for *.tex, *.py, *.hhp, *.cpp
> in project-source-directories.

project-find-regexp? Do you imagine we'll need a separate command like that?

> 2) You are refactoring a C++ function foo::bar, and want to find all
> references to bar* for comparison. You invoke xref-find-regexp, which
> searches xref-source-directories.

Like mentioned, it'll hopefully be xref-find-references.

> There are a couple of implementation options here:
>
> - implement project-source-directories as the union of
>    xref-source-directories for all backends listed in a project file

This sounds like you envision a one-backend-per-language kind of 
situation. I think that there should be just one backend there, set in a 
minor mode, that knows enough about this mixed project's structure, to 
know where to search.

> - implement xref-source-directories as a subset of
>    project-source-directories for each backend.
>
> I'm inclined to the latter; it's closer to what ada-mode does now.

Could you explain what that means exactly? How is it implemented?