Re: project-find-file: switch to include non-tracked files

[Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>]

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Hi Manuel,

On 04.10.2021 11:33, Manuel Uberti wrote:
> Sorry to bring up this again, but is there anything that can be done on 
> this?
> 
> The proposed solution with C-u C-x p f seems very reasonable to me, I 
> don't know what others project.el users think though.

It kind of got lost among other issues, sorry. That's doubly easy to do 
with emacs-devel threads, so if you could use Debbugs for feature 
requests in the future, that would be great.

Now, I've whipped up a small POC. See the attachment, try it out.

Since 'find' without ignore instructions is as fast as 'git ls-files' 
(even faster, in my testing, on my machine), it didn't require any 
changes in the API so far.

But is that the behavior we want?

Currently it lists _all_ files in the directory, including, say, all 
contents of .git/ (of which there can be a lot, depending on the 
project, whether it uses 'git flow', etc).

Should we add the common ignores from vc-directory-exclusion-list? To 
simply filter those dirs out?

Maybe something else too? Like grep-find-ignored-files (it lists common 
compiled/object files which one usually doesn't want to search, or even 
visit)?

Combining the vars above would bring the file listing to the default 
'project-ignores' behavior. Which the 'transient' backend uses, for example.

But in the previous iteration of this thread you also referred to Helm's 
'C-c i' behavior. Does it only list the ignored files?

In any case, we could make 'C-u project-find-file' have this behavior: 
listing only ignored files instead. And maybe not all of them: skipping 
the contents of .git/, .bzr/, etc, still sounds useful. The upside is 
possibly having a lot fewer files to choose from.

That *would* require a more involved change in project.el, but at least 
we'd make it after carefully weighing the options.

[-- Attachment #2: project-find-file-no-ignores.diff --]
[-- Type: text/x-patch, Size: 2567 bytes --]

diff --git a/lisp/progmodes/project.el b/lisp/progmodes/project.el
index 3eaa789b3e..15fa86f07c 100644
--- a/lisp/progmodes/project.el
+++ b/lisp/progmodes/project.el
@@ -835,28 +835,28 @@ project--read-regexp
                  project-regexp-history-variable)))
 
 ;;;###autoload
-(defun project-find-file ()
+(defun project-find-file (&optional no-ignores)
   "Visit a file (with completion) in the current project.
 
 The filename at point (determined by `thing-at-point'), if any,
 is available as part of \"future history\"."
-  (interactive)
+  (interactive "P")
   (let* ((pr (project-current t))
          (dirs (list (project-root pr))))
-    (project-find-file-in (thing-at-point 'filename) dirs pr)))
+    (project-find-file-in (thing-at-point 'filename) dirs pr no-ignores)))
 
 ;;;###autoload
-(defun project-or-external-find-file ()
+(defun project-or-external-find-file (&optional no-ignores)
   "Visit a file (with completion) in the current project or external roots.
 
 The filename at point (determined by `thing-at-point'), if any,
 is available as part of \"future history\"."
-  (interactive)
+  (interactive "P")
   (let* ((pr (project-current t))
          (dirs (cons
                 (project-root pr)
                 (project-external-roots pr))))
-    (project-find-file-in (thing-at-point 'filename) dirs pr)))
+    (project-find-file-in (thing-at-point 'filename) dirs pr no-ignores)))
 
 (defcustom project-read-file-name-function #'project--read-file-cpd-relative
   "Function to call to read a file name from a list.
@@ -909,12 +909,19 @@ project--read-file-absolute
                                    predicate
                                    hist mb-default))
 
-(defun project-find-file-in (suggested-filename dirs project)
+(defun project-find-file-in (suggested-filename dirs project &optional no-ignores)
   "Complete a file name in DIRS in PROJECT and visit the result.
 
 SUGGESTED-FILENAME is a relative file name, or part of it, which
-is used as part of \"future history\"."
-  (let* ((all-files (project-files project dirs))
+is used as part of \"future history\".
+
+If NO-IGNORES is specified, include all files from DIRS."
+  (let* ((all-files
+          (if no-ignores
+              (mapcan
+               (lambda (dir) (project--files-in-directory dir nil))
+               dirs)
+            (project-files project dirs)))
          (completion-ignore-case read-file-name-completion-ignore-case)
          (file (funcall project-read-file-name-function
                         "Find file" all-files nil nil