RE: IDE

[Drew Adams]

> > I'm not contrasting TAGS with Gnu Global.  You are free to do
> > that.  I am not arguing in favor of TAGS over other indexing
> > and querying mechanisms.
> 
> Emacs doesn't have any real abstraction over TAGS files. etags.el
> basically operates on its contents.

Yes, and?

> > The TAGS file feature defines an index format and an index
> > query mechanism.  That's all.  How and when the content of a
> > given index gets generated or updated is a different question.
> 
> The index doesn't even say what kind of hit it is. Is it a definition?
> Is it a reference? Is it both? Like, a method override.

It lets you index a location in a source file, associating it
with a name (symbol).  That's all it does.  No one is saying
that TAGS is the most general indexing system, or that it is
adequate for all indexing needs.

It is one tool among many possible index-and-query tools.

> > And that generation/updating involves parsing, which has
> > been acknowledged to be the hard part.
> 
> There are several parts, of varying difficulties.
> 
> > Everything you say in support of claiming that the data
> > structure "*is* a problem" is, in fact statements about
> > the problem of parsing, not the data structure format.
> 
> Nothing I've said about the file format yet is concerned
> with parsing.

Please read what you wrote, which you've elided.  The problems
you mentioned were about (1) having to "re-generate the file
each time you reparse the project" and (2) being "forced to
parse the TAGS file and perform filtering in Elisp".

I guess you could argue that #2 as a problem derives from
the TAGS data structure, but nothing specific was said about
what that problem is.  #1 seems clearly to be about parsing
the source files.

> > If you want to argue that any use of *files* to hold the
> > index structure is problematic then do so explicitly.
> 
> Flat files, yes. Not any kind of files, obviously.

You might want to elaborate, if there is something important
there.

But again.  No one is arguing that TAGS files are the only
or the "best" indexing feature.  It would be silly to do
so.  They, like Imenu, remain a useful feature for Emacs.

And it is unfair, I think, to point to current deficiencies
in support for a language as proof, by itself, that the Emacs
TAGS feature is problematic for that language.

There can be other ways in which it is not ideal, but current
lack of someone having written support for this or that language
is not, in itself, a reason.  The same holds for Imenu.

There are no doubt languages for which TAGS or Imenu is not
sufficient.  But just because a given language currently has
no support for creating a TAGS file or an Imenu menu is not a
sufficient reason for concluding that TAGS or Imenu is
inadequate for that language.  Some other, specific reasons
need to be given (your mention of methods, for example).