bug#15641: 24.3; [PATCH] Add find-definition for M-.

[Josh <josh@foxtail.org>]

On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 5:58 AM, Stefan Monnier
<monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>> I think we should just make M-. work on elisp-related places such as
>> lisp-interaction-mode, emacs-lisp-mode, eval-expression and even
>> help-mode.
>
> Right: M-. should not be bound to an command specific to etags but to
> a command which delegates the work to a find-tag-function (whose
> default can then be to use etags).
>
> Of course, find-tag-function should do "as little as possible": find the
> corresponding place and return it.  The generic part of the code will
> take care of displaying the buffer, selecting it, remembering the
> previous position, etc... so we don't need a pop-tag-mark-function.

If you haven't already done so, it might be worth taking a look at
elisp-slime-nav-mode[0], which implements something similar to your
patch in a minor mode.  Its author appears to have signed copyright
papers as well.

I'm in agreement with Stefan's inclination to make the entry points
to this functionality sufficiently generic that they can be tagging
system agnostic.  If we start down that path for M-. it seems wise
to consider and specify user interfaces to all of the related
functionality (e.g. as described here[1]) at the same time in order
to provide a single coherent set of commands and key bindings
for navigating source trees, regardless of whether the navigation
in any particular context is facilitated by etags, GNU Global, nrepl,
or other means.

[0] https://github.com/purcell/elisp-slime-nav
[1] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsTags#toc1

Josh