bug#31754: 25.1; etags output lacks info for making xref more useful

[Gauthier Östervall]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2018 at 7:46 PM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> severity 31754 wishlist
> thanks
>
>> From: Gauthier Östervall <gauthier@ostervall.se>
>> Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2018 11:21:54 +0200
>> This could be more helpful, the suggestions are not distinguishable. I
>> suggest including at least the whole source row.
>
> I originally thought that etags should be extended to include the
> while line in TAGS, at least as an option, but the more I think about
> this, the less I'm convinced thats the right approach.  For starters,
> no one said that line will show enough to tell the difference.  For
> example, imagine this code:
>
>   int my_identifier(int a,
>                     int b) {
>       return 2 * a + b;
>   }
>
>   int my_identifier(int a,
>                     int b, double fac) {
>       return fac*a + b;
>   }
>

Agreed, showing the whole row is not enough.

> So now I think that perhaps we should leave etags alone, and instead
> add a feature to xref whereby the lines in the XREF buffer will show
> in a tooltip the full signature of the function.

I am not a fan of tooltips, to be honest. I guess I'm not alone here.
I like to visually grep all the suggestions then go to the right one
fast, instead of needing to put my cursor on every row before I can
see their tooltip.

In order to show the full signature, XREF would need to parse the
source files. etags is already parsing files anyway, I can't see why
not let it save whole signatures to TAGS?