Re: cl-defgeneric vs random funcall in project.el

[Stephen Leake]

Dmitry Gutov <address@hidden> writes:

> On 07/30/2015 10:04 AM, Stephen Leake wrote:
>
>> If the "vc project backend" wants to be a "real project backend", then
>> yes, it needs to define project-search-path.
>
> Would its definition add the VC root to the list returned by
> project-search-path-function?

Not if I wrote it; it would not use project-search-path-function.

The point of a "project backend" is that it knows _everything_ about the
project. No stray hooks for users to pervert things.

I would write the vc implementation of project-search-path to return a
flat list of all the directories under the vc root.

>> That would not be useful for editing elisp files; the elisp project
>> backend is useful for that.
>
> There is no elisp project backend. Just an elisp-specific value of
> project-search-path-function.
>
> Which obviously omits project-roots and project-ignores.

Right. The elisp project backend is incomplete.

That's one problem with using two dispatching mechanisms; it's too easy
to get mixtures of incomplete implementations that "seem to work".

-- 
-- Stephe