Subject: bug#53749: 29.0.50; [PATCH] Xref backend for TeX buffers

From: Dmitry Gutov <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2024 01:13:43 +0300

On 10/06/2024 00:03, Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the 
Swiss army knife of text editors wrote:
>>>> +;; Populate `semantic-symref-filepattern-alist' for the in-tree modes;
>>>> +;; AUCTeX is doing the same for its modes.
>>>> +(with-eval-after-load 'semantic/symref/grep
>>>> +  (defvar semantic-symref-filepattern-alist)
>>>> +  (push '(latex-mode "*.[tT]e[xX]" "*.ltx" "*.sty" "*.cl[so]"
>>>> +                     "*.bbl" "*.drv" "*.hva")
>>>> +        semantic-symref-filepattern-alist)
>>>> +  (push '(plain-tex-mode "*.[tT]e[xX]" "*.ins")
>>>> +        semantic-symref-filepattern-alist)
>>>> +  (push '(doctex-mode "*.dtx") semantic-symref-filepattern-alist))
>>> Doesn't this stuff rather belong in semantic itself?
>> Good point.
> FWIW, I think the responsability of `symref.el` is to provide hooks like
> the `semantic-symref-filepattern-alist` var along with the code that
> uses them, but the mode-specific settings, such as knowledge about which
> glob patterns should be used for `latex-mode` belong to the
> corresponding mode.

I've been looking at semantic-symref-filepattern-alist like a workaround 
for the fast that the major modes don't provide enough relevant 
information in auto-mode-alist (or, to look at it differently, don't 
provide such info in some other variable which the auto-mode-alist entry 
would be computed from).

 From that perspective, storing the missing association inside the 
semantic-symref package seems suitable. But a more "proper" place for it 
would be better, of course.