Re: Consistency for xref-show-{xrefs,definitions}-function

[Dmitry Gutov]

Hi!

On 14.01.2021 22:27, Gabriel do Nascimento Ribeiro wrote:
> I noticed that the options 'xref-show-xrefs-function' and
> 'xref-show-definitions-function' are not symmetrical.
>
> The defcustom for 'xref-show-xrefs-function' does not have type choices
> as 'xref-show-definitions-function' has. Furthermore, it's quite strange
> to configure it as follow:
>
> (setq xref-show-xrefs-function
>        'xref-show-definitions-completing-read)
>
> I suggest to create similar functions for 'xref-show-xrefs-function',
> which at this moment can be just aliases but can be independent
> functions in the future, if necessary:
>    - xref-show-xrefs-buffer
>    - xref-show-xrefs-buffer-at-bottom
>    - xref-show-xrefs-completing-read
>
> Also, the docstrings of both options could be improved a little bit to
> give more information about the default choices.
>
> I can submit a patch if these suggestions are accepted.

Why do you want this?

xref-find-definitions differs from the rest of Xref-using commands in 
that it usually only find one location, and when there are several, the 
user wants to quickly choose one of the alternatives, the faster the 
better. The different options for xref-show-definitions-function provide 
different solutions for that problem.

In all other cases returning multiple results is the common case, and 
you usually want to see all of them, not just one. For that, the 
completing-read UI, for example, is not very suitable.