Re: Automatic (e)tags generation and incremental updates

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 10.01.2021 18:49, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> > I tend to think that conceptually each buffer should point to its
> > corresponding tags table.
>
> What about buffers that don't belong to any project?  M-. generally
> works (or should work) in any buffer.

That's a different workflow, one that we support already.

I don't know how to automate it better. If the buffer doesn't belong to 
any project, which tags table would we use for it? We'll have to prompt 
the user, and that's what we do already by default.

Some kind of automation could be made if, instead of using 
project-current straight away, etags-regen could add some 
defcustom/hooks/etc which could return some value that implements a 
generalized notion of a project for etags-regen's specific purpose, with 
file list, the "where to put TAGS" directory and inclusion logic. Which 
we would then use.

I don't know how many users would go to all that trouble, however, when 
they could just go on with using 'M-x visit-tags-table'.