GNU bug report logs - #60601
29.0.60; project-find-files reports files in seemingly random order

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Jostein Kjønigsen <jostein.kjonigsen <at> superoffice.com>
To: "bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org" <bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org>
Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>, Dmitry Gutov <dgutov <at> yandex.ru>
Subject: 29.0.60; project-find-files reports files in seemingly random order
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2023 10:48:56 +0100

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

When working in large projects, and using completion engines like Helm, 
one often navigates within an Emacs-project by first typing some 
preliminary filtering-criteria, observing the result, and then further 
limiting the results until one eventually finds the one file you want to 
work with.

For this flow to work well, one needs to have related files show up 
close to one another, and not being listed in "random" order.

However, in some projects I've observed that generated files (not part 
of VC) are shown on top, and VC-files comes later.

When the generated files are supposed to be alongside the checked in 
files, this makes navigation using project-find-file hard, because of 
the low data-locality in the presented results.

Example:

- src/someFile.d.ts   # compiled files
- src/someFile.js
- tests/someTest.d.ts
- tests/someTest.js
- src/someFile.ts     # vc-files
- tests/someTest.ts

If the results are sorted, the proper files are much easier to find quickly:

- src/someFile.d.ts
- src/someFile.js
- src/someFile.ts
- tests/someTest.d.ts
- tests/someTest.js
- tests/someTest.ts

Are there any reason we're currently not doing that?

If we can agree sorting the result is a proper thing to do, attached is 
a patch which implements this change.

--
Jostein

In GNU Emacs 29.0.60 (build 13, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version

 3.24.33, cairo version 1.16.0) of 2023-01-06 built on dev-jostein
Repository revision: 699711786ac7aa6d6524467076a45568e283e061
Repository branch: emacs-29
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12201001
System Description: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS

Configured using:
 'configure --with-json --with-tree-sitter
 PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/home/jostein/.opam/default/lib/pkgconfig:'

Configured features:
ACL CAIRO DBUS FREETYPE GIF GLIB GMP GNUTLS GPM GSETTINGS HARFBUZZ JPEG
JSON LCMS2 LIBOTF LIBSELINUX LIBSYSTEMD LIBXML2 M17N_FLT MODULES NOTIFY
INOTIFY PDUMPER PNG RSVG SECCOMP SOUND THREADS TIFF TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS
TREE_SITTER X11 XDBE XIM XINPUT2 XPM GTK3 ZLIB

Important settings:
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  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nb_NO.UTF-8
  value of $LC_TIME: nb_NO.UTF-8
  value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
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Major mode: ELisp/l

Minor modes in effect:
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  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  hs-minor-mode: t

Load-path shadows:
/home/jostein/.emacs.d/elpa/transient-20221202.1727/transient hides 
/home/jostein/build/emacs/lisp/transient

Features:
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Memory information:
((conses 16 663746 79685)
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-- 
Kind regards
*Jostein Kjønigsen*
Software Architect
SuperOffice AS
www.superoffice.com <https://www.superoffice.com>

[Message part 2 (text/html, inline)]

[0001-Make-project-find-files-return-files-in-sorted-order.patch (text/x-patch, attachment)]

Message #8 received at 60601 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov <at> yandex.ru>
To: Jostein Kjønigsen <jostein.kjonigsen <at> superoffice.com>,
 60601 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Subject: Re: bug#60601: 29.0.60; project-find-files reports files in seemingly
 random order
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2023 03:37:17 +0200

Hi!

On 06/01/2023 11:48, Jostein Kjønigsen via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, 
the Swiss army knife of text editors wrote:
> When working in large projects, and using completion engines like Helm, 
> one often navigates within an Emacs-project by first typing some 
> preliminary filtering-criteria, observing the result, and then further 
> limiting the results until one eventually finds the one file you want to 
> work with.
> 
> For this flow to work well, one needs to have related files show up 
> close to one another, and not being listed in "random" order.

One of the problems is, Helm is not a proper/compatible completing-read 
substitute. Just like Ivy, which I myself use.

If you check out the default completion, you'll see the file names are 
sorted, because a completing-read-function is supposed to obey the 
display-sort-function metadata, and when it's absent -- the variable 
completions-sort (in Emacs <29 it was hardcoded alphabetical sort by 
default).

So one solution would be to use a framework-specific way to apply 
sorting, e.g. helm-completing-read-handlers-alist. In Ivy's case, I 
think ivy-sort-functions-alist is supposed to fill that role, but 
apparently it's not used when the collection is a function. I'll 
probably file that as a bug later.

> However, in some projects I've observed that generated files (not part 
> of VC) are shown on top, and VC-files comes later.
> 
> When the generated files are supposed to be alongside the checked in 
> files, this makes navigation using project-find-file hard, because of 
> the low data-locality in the presented results.

This never bothered me much personally, but the reason is apparently 
that 'git ls-files' behaves like that. We do apply sorting to find's 
output (the default project-files impl), starting with 
https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=23179#296.

> Example:
> 
> - src/someFile.d.ts   # compiled files
> - src/someFile.js
> - tests/someTest.d.ts
> - tests/someTest.js
> - src/someFile.ts     # vc-files
> - tests/someTest.ts
> 
> If the results are sorted, the proper files are much easier to find quickly:
> 
> - src/someFile.d.ts
> - src/someFile.js
> - src/someFile.ts
> - tests/someTest.d.ts
> - tests/someTest.js
> - tests/someTest.ts
> 
> Are there any reason we're currently not doing that?
> 
> If we can agree sorting the result is a proper thing to do, attached is 
> a patch which implements this change.

No hard reason not to, but the minor ones are:

- A little extra garbage collection.
- We'll probably apply the new sorting in project-files, keeping the one 
in project--files-in-directory already in place. Then I suppose we'll 
need to document the new restriction on project-files that it returns 
alphabetically sorted files (option A)?

Or if we move the sorting to project-find-file-in, that will keep the 
xref output unsorted. Do we sort the results after the search is done 
instead? That might be an improvement, but it could create a performance 
hit in the pathological case when there are a lot more matches than files.

So we can do that (option A), probably.

Alternatively, this could be a good occasion to file the bug reports to 
Helm and Ivy, to bring their completing-read functions closer to 
conformant behavior.

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