Subject: Re: bug#53644: 29.0.50; xref-search-program breaks if programm not installed on a remote host

From: Dmitry Gutov <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2022 21:45:39 +0200

Hi Michael,

On 04.02.2022 10:15, Michael Albinus wrote:

>>> When invoking a command that respects xref-search-program via TRAMP,
>>> e.g. on a remote system that doesn't have (in my case ripgrep)
>>> installed, an error is signalled indicating that the search query
>>> couldn't be executed.
>>
>> One way to work around this will probably involve an addition to
>> find-file-hook and some code which checks (file-remote-p
>> buffer-file-name) and sets xref-search-program to a particular value
>> buffer-locally depending on the result.
>>
>> Or an around-advice for xref-matches-in-files.
> 
> There are connection-local variables exactly for this use case.

Is there a documented way on how to make the variable's value on remote 
hosts customizable for the user too?

Or maybe it's not exactly necessary for this custom var.

>> A proper solution would probably look more similar to
>> grep-host-defaults-alist and grep-compute-defaults.
> 
> On my wishlist, there is moving grep-*-defaults to connection-local
> variables. But I fear it will break too many existing configurations.
> 
> Best regards, Michael.

Cheers,
Dmitry.