Re: progmodes/project.el and search paths

[Stephen Leake]

Dmitry Gutov <address@hidden> writes:

>
> Would adding this help?
>
> diff --git a/lisp/progmodes/project.el b/lisp/progmodes/project.el
> index d849f93..16578f1 100644
> --- a/lisp/progmodes/project.el
> +++ b/lisp/progmodes/project.el
> @@ -22,6 +22,10 @@
>  ;; This file contains generic infrastructure for dealing with
>  ;; projects, and a number of public functions: finding the current
>  ;; root, related project directories, search path, etc.
> +;;
> +;; The goal is to make it easy for Lisp programs to operate on the
> +;; current project, without having to know which package handles
> +;; detection of that project type, parsing its config files, etc.

Better.

I suggest adding "and Emacs core functions", to emphasize that grep etc
should use the project facilities, and also mention existing backends:

;; The goal is to make it easy for Lisp programs, and Emacs core
;; functions, to operate on the current project, without having to know
;; which package handles detection of that project type, parsing its
;; config files, etc. Existing project packages should provide thin
;; wrappers around their functions to implement this API.

> There's wrapper for EDE living in
> lisp/cedet/ede.el already.

That's a start.

> Projectile "should" include its own wrapper as well.

Yes.

>> In particular, there should be no "xref-find-regexp"; instead, "grep"
>> and similar commands should be enhanced to optionally use project
>> functions to get the search path.
>
> xref-find-regexp can still be useful: it'll search a user-specified
> directory and present the results using the xref interface.
>
> At the moment, xref-find-regexp offers both types of searches. To
> search in an arbitrary directory, you preface it with C-u.

I thought you agreed that the compilation-mode output of grep was better
for this than the xref display.

grep currently searches a user-specified directory; it could offer the
choice of project search path via C-u 1 or some such. And we could add a
grep-project command so the choice shows up in command completion.

grep-project could get filename patterns from the project, as ede almost
provides.

That would require an additional wrapper in ede, for project-file-pattern.

--
-- Stephe