xref-find-apropos behaviour is different in source code buffer and in REPL buffers

[Andre0991]

Hi.

I'm not sure eglot is directly related to the issue, of if it's an issue at all, so I'm starting a discussion w/o too many details.

In a Clojure project, if I use xref-find-apropos in a source code buffer, it correctly uses LSP for finding stuff.
However, if I run xref-find-apropos in the REPL buffer associated with the same project, it asks me for tags.

I suppose xref is not considering eglot as one of its backends in the REPL buffer.
Why is that? Is this related to project.el?

[jdtsmith]

Lsp doesn’t consider REPL’s at all. It’s only for source code files.

[Andre0991]

That was my suspicion.

But then, my question is how to make xref-find-apropos work in a REPL with the LSP backend, if this is possible at all.

[jdtsmith]

What is your expectation of what find-apropos should do in a REPL? In eglot from a buffer it sends a workspace/symbol request, and your LSP server, knowing your project/workspace, searches for that symbol and returns matches. What is the "workspace" in a REPL? If you have one REPL per workspace, it's perhaps possible to hook it up by switching to the first buffer whose (e.g., for python) (python-shell-get-process) matches (get-buffer-process (current-buffer)) in the REPL, and the completing the apropos call from there; see xref-backend-apropos.

[Andre0991]

Cool, I took inspiration from your suggestion and came up with this function:

(defun apt--inf-clojure-repl-apropos
    ()
  (interactive)
  (if-let ((sym (symbol-at-point)))
    (progn
      (inf-clojure-switch-to-recent-buffer)
      (let ((pattern (read-string "Pattern: "
				  (symbol-name sym))))
	(when pattern
	  (xref-find-apropos pattern))))
    (message "No symbol at point.")))