Re: xref in a narrowed buffer?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 04.03.2020 18:08, Robert Pluim wrote:
> > > > > > On Wed, 4 Mar 2020 17:20:53 +0200, Dmitry Gutov <address@hidden> said:
>
>      Dmitry> On 04.03.2020 16:39, Robert Pluim wrote:
>      >> Should 'xref-goto-ref' widen the buffer before attempting to jump to
>      >> the definition? Or should 'xref-find-definitions' not show definitions
>      >> that are outside the narrowed area?
>
>      Dmitry> The latter is pretty hard to do, so the former, I guess.
>
> After wandering through the maze of twisty cl-defmethods and wondering
> why it wasnʼt working, I read the actual message, and realised I was
> using the etags backend. This works for me, perhaps add a (when
> widen-automatically ..) ?
>
> diff --git a/lisp/progmodes/etags.el b/lisp/progmodes/etags.el
> index 897f105019..6995a70b5a 100644
> --- a/lisp/progmodes/etags.el
> +++ b/lisp/progmodes/etags.el
> @@ -2131,6 +2131,7 @@ xref-location-marker
>       (let ((buffer (find-file-noselect file)))
>         (with-current-buffer buffer
>           (save-excursion
> +          (widen)
>             (etags-goto-tag-location tag-info)
>             (point-marker))))))

This would also need a save-restriction.

But according to others, we should signal a meaningful error instead.

That might have to be done in another place (also in etags.el), before 
the "rerun etags" message is shown.