Re: Xref/tags/lsp possible bug

[Alessandro Bertulli]

Thanks Dmitry!

> AFAIK it's a limitation of the LSP protocol: it's unable to perform
> completion on all symbol names globally. Nor is it able, in general, to
> find a symbol by name (it needs a location of an existing reference in
> some file). So that affects how lsp-mode's Xref integration works (and
> Eglot's).

Indeed, you're right, I opened an issue on lsp-mode's GitHub and the
maintainer (Ivan) kindly answered me. I report here its answer, in case
it is useful to someone:

"In lsp protocol, there is no convenient method to list the symbols.
We do some hacks using document symbols to provide some handling when
the method is invoked like that C-u M-x xref-find-definitions(or with
(setq xref-prompt-for-identifier t)) but that is not really what the
xref wants. This feature of xref is designed with tags in mind and it
does not fit well with lsp protocol. Thus we have created lsp-find-*
set of functions to make the difference between lsp and xref more
evident."

Okay, it's not a real problem, but I wonder why is it, though. I
suppose LSP does have a sort of symbol table kept in memory, so I
think it wouldn't be a big problem to allow the user to query it. I
suppose it's something that can be added in a future specification.

As a side note, reading your answer to Eli: yes, I got the hint it
could be a problem of Xref, that's a part of why I asked here (being
Xref a part of Emacs, or at least GNU Elpa).

Anyway, thank you all for your support!

Alessandro