Re: Allow xref to use other than current major-mode

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 08/25/2015 01:00 PM, Stephen Leake wrote:

> To handle this, I propose changing both
> xref-identifier-completion-table-function and xref-find-function to be
> mode-local, instead of buffer-local.

That seems unnecessarily limiting. First, mode-local facility is a part 
of CEDET, so it would need to be always loaded.

Second, how would a minor mode set an xref backend? It might not be tied 
to a particular major mode.

> There are similar use cases; from a LaTeX document buffer, looking at the
> description of an Ada function, find the Ada code that defines that
> function. Or from a text mode notes file, look for a definition in any
> one of several languages.

All similar cases can be solved by a project-aware xref backend that 
knows about all languages used, and allows navigating to identifiers in 
all of them.