bug#63896: [PATCH] Support annotating and sorting the project list during completion

[Spencer Baugh]

Tags: patch


This patch adds an annotation-function and display-sort-function to the
completion-table used for project-prompt-project-dir and
project-prompt-project-name, as well as a user customization variable to
customize the behavior of the annotation and sorting functions.

The idea is that projects are annotated with useful information for
deciding which one you want to switch to, and sorted based on how likely
you are to want to switch to or work on them.  For example, a user might
want to know how many buffers they have open in each project, to help
tell them apart at a glance.  Furthermore, a user might be more likely
to switch to projects they've already been working on in this Emacs
instance, so they might want projects with more buffers open to be
sorted before projects with no buffers.

All this is customized by the variable project-annotations which is a
list of functions used to generate the annotations and sorting metadata.
The user can add their own functions to add new annotations and sorting
behavior.  See its docstring for more details.

I added three annotation functions as a starting point, which when added
to project-annotations will annotate with the number of buffers, the
modification time of the root directory, and compilation results.

In this patch I have turned all three of these annotations on by
default, by putting all three in project-annotations, but probably when
this is actually pushed we want project-annotations to be empty by
default.  (Maybe?)

In my own packages, building on this, I hope to add annotation functions
like "number of bugs assigned to you in this project" and "number of
lines of incoming code to review in this project", so that
project-switch-project is a nice way to pick what to work on next.

This patch is still a bit rough around the edges, but I'm posting it now
to get feedback.

In GNU Emacs 29.0.90 (build 6, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version
 3.22.30, cairo version 1.15.12) of 2023-06-02 built on igm-qws-u22796a
Repository revision: ff6163fac51759945aa619ca6bf28413be4a53e0
Repository branch: emacs-29
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12011000
System Description: CentOS Linux 7 (Core)

Configured using:
 'configure --with-x-toolkit=gtk --with-gif=ifavailable'

0001-Support-annotating-and-sorting-the-project-list-duri.patch
Description: Text Data