Subject: bug#22292: 25.0.50; xref-find-references doesn't find anything for Lisp symbols

From: Dmitry Gutov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2016 16:29:57 +0200

On 01/02/2016 04:14 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> What does that use if an ID database is not available?  Grep?

Global, CScope, or, yes, Grep. I always end up using Grep.

> Can you guide me through the call sequence?  Debugging xref and its
> back-ends is a pain.

You don't need to worry about xref backends here, only about CEDET 
tools. Try debugging xref-collect-references.

It calls semantic-symref-find-references-by-name, which
calls semantic-symref-instantiate (which detects the tool used in the 
current directory), then delegates the search to the tool's logic via 
the generics semantic-symref-get-result and semantic-symref-perform-search.

The Grep implementation for that stuff lives in 
lisp/cedet/semantic/symref/grep.el.

> I'm not replacing one command for another, I'm rewriting the entire
> section.  It cannot be kept in its current form, since it assumes
> everything is based on TAGS.

That's great, but I think my point still stands: if worst comes to 
worst, we could leave this command unadvertised.

Not that I wouldn't try my best to fix any remaining small-to-medium 
problems, of course.