Re: xref-find-matches and stuff

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 10 May 2015 21:01:42 -0400
> Cc: Vitalie Spinu <address@hidden>, address@hidden,
>       address@hidden, address@hidden
> 
> > Back-ends that miss symbols make no sense, IMO.  They should be fixed
> > not to miss them.
> 
> I mostly agree.  Nevertheless, as mentioned in an earlier example, etags
> misses symbols.  Typically, all but one of the symbols created by
> "complex" declarations such `cl-defstruct' or `define-derived-mode'.

Do we really want/expect etags to fully support languages that produce
symbols dynamically?  It's not up to the job.  We could add some
ad-hoc rules for declarations such as the above, though.  E.g., each
use of define-derived-mode would automagically "define" MODE-map,
MODE-hook, MODE-syntax-table, and MODE-abbrev-table.  If that's what
we want, it shouldn't be hard to add that to etags.c.  Or we could
teach xref to look for MODE if MODE-abbrev-table is not found.  But
the result will still be only a partial coverage.

These languages need a different approach, IMO.  And I'm not sure any
approach will yield better results.