On 2 Sep 2022, at 04:42, Anton Vodonosov <avodonosov@yandex.ru> wrote:

Hello.

People may want to open package.lisp of some library to study the public API,
and quickly navigate to definition of any symbol from the :export list,
in order to read the docstring.

I use slime-edit-definition (with the M-. shortcut) for navigation to docstrings.

But that usually does not work from within of (defpackage ) form,
because slime determines the current package based on the (in-package)
at the top of the file and usually package files have

(in-package :cl-user)

(defpackage :some-lib
(:export #:some-function
#:another-function
...))

So when cursor stays on #:some-function and M-. is pressed
slime says "No known definition for: #:some-function (in :cl-user)"

As a workaround I temporarily insert (in-pakcage :some-lib) above the (defpackage ).

But it would be convenient if slime understood that the within the :export
option of defpackage the symbols belong to the package being defined
and not to the closest (in-package ).

So that the proposal for consideration of the slime maintainers.

It’s a good idea to start from the package export list to browse a package, but I never did it, notably because the export list loses the kind of definition the symbols name. (Agreed, it’s often obvious, but there are a lot of cases where multiple definitions of different kinds exist).

From the documentation, the symbols are usually tagged, with a prefix or suffix [macro] or [function] or [class] etc…. The identification of the package may be more difficult since it’s often more informal, (just a title).