From: Ken Brown <kbrown@cornell.edu>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>, Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 f8208b6: Document the user-level features of the Xref package
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 15:38:58 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <56A687E2.7000300@cornell.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <838u3f3si0.fsf@gnu.org>
I have a couple of suggestions, based on my experience when I tried to
use Xref for the first time.
First, paragraph b of the Xref info node talks about etags, with a
reference to the subnode on creating tags tables. It would have helped
me if there had been a further sentence saying that a user has to give
the command M-x visit-tags-table before Xref will use etags as the
backend. This sentence would be accompanied by a reference to the
subnode on selecting a tags table. That node is currently listed in the
Menu, but it's not obvious (or at least wasn't obvious to me) what the
relevance was, especially since the description of that node refers to
*visiting* a tags table rather than telling Xref to using one.
Second, I suggest that Xref should offer to use etags as the backend
when a TAGS file exists in the current directory.
I had the following experience in my first attempt to use Xref:
After reading the Xref node and glancing at the "Creating Tags Tables"
node, I remembered that there was a 'tags' target in the top level
Makefile of the emacs tree, so I gave the command 'make tags' to create
the TAGS files. Then I visited a C file in the src directory and tried
'M-.' on an identifier. The result was the error message 'Symbol’s
function definition is void: etags--xref-backend'. I didn't know what
to do with that message, so I went back to the Xref node to see if it
would tell me how to tell Xref to use etags as backend. It didn't, but
I finally tried M-x visit-tags-table, and it worked.
Ken
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-01-25 20:38 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 54+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <20160109191428.26341.44105@vcs.savannah.gnu.org>
[not found] ` <E1aHyy4-0006rU-Td@vcs.savannah.gnu.org>
2016-01-10 3:02 ` [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 f8208b6: Document the user-level features of the Xref package Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-10 15:50 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-10 18:05 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-10 18:59 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-10 19:32 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-10 20:51 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-10 21:11 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-11 3:33 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-11 16:55 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-11 17:52 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-11 19:09 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-11 19:31 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-11 19:41 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-11 20:14 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-11 20:21 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-18 17:31 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-18 22:18 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-19 17:41 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-19 21:53 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-20 4:43 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-20 7:28 ` John Wiegley
2016-01-20 20:53 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-20 21:03 ` John Wiegley
2016-01-20 21:09 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-21 19:01 ` Stephen Leake
2016-01-21 20:32 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-21 3:46 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-21 3:28 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-21 17:29 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-21 18:46 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-21 19:00 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-21 19:46 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-21 20:02 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-21 20:10 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-21 20:32 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-21 21:40 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-24 2:20 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-24 15:29 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-25 20:38 ` Ken Brown [this message]
2016-01-25 20:52 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-25 21:29 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-26 2:44 ` Ken Brown
2016-01-26 6:22 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-21 19:19 ` Stephen Leake
2016-01-21 19:26 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-22 7:40 ` Stephen Leake
2016-01-22 8:21 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-22 10:46 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-22 13:37 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-22 10:07 ` Dmitry Gutov
2016-01-21 20:09 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-01-22 18:16 ` John Yates
2016-01-19 5:36 ` John Wiegley
2016-01-19 5:47 ` Dmitry Gutov
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