Support `Go to Declaration` for `exec`'d files

[BradLugo]

Support Go to Declaration for files that are exec'd in a similar way . and source'd files are supported.

[jansorg]

Thanks for your request!

Are you looking for Go to declaration on the referenced file, e.g. for ./my_file.bash of exec ./my_file.bash?
For relative paths like ./my_file.bash this should already be available in the current version.

Or would you like Go do declaration for definitions contained in the referenced file?
I'm not sure how useful that would be, because exec is the last executed command and only executes, but does not load it like source.

If it's none of this, please provide a few more details to help me understand what's needed.
Thanks!

[BradLugo]

Ah, I hadn't tried explicitly setting the path. I should've investigated a bit more before submitting this issue 😅

I'll describe an example and won't try to presume the solution.

I have the following structure:

❯ eza --tree
 dep
└──  dep1.sh
 main.sh

main.sh:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e

function needs_dep() { return 0; }

DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd)"

if needs_dep; then
    exec "${DIR}/dep/dep1.sh"
fi

In the above example, Go to declaration doesn't seem to work on "${DIR}/dep/dep1.sh". However, it does when using source instead of exec. The other kicker, as you pointed out, is if you use a path without a variable (e.g., "./dep/dep1.sh"), Go to declaration works as expected.

Here are the different scenarios I tested:

bash snippet	Does Go to declaration follow?
"./dep/dep1.sh" (invoke subshell without a command)	Yes ✅
. "./dep/dep1.sh"	Yes ✅
source "./dep/dep1.sh"	Yes ✅
exec "./dep/dep1.sh"	Yes ✅
"${DIR}/dep/dep1.sh" (invoke subshell without a command)	No ❌
. "${DIR}/dep/dep1.sh"	Yes ✅
source "${DIR}/dep/dep1.sh"	Yes ✅
exec "${DIR}/dep/dep1.sh"	No ❌

[jansorg]

Thanks!

Currently, ${DIR} of source "${DIR}/dep/dep1.sh" is dropped to be compatible with ShellCheck's path handling for source.
ShellCheck does this to avoid flagging the very common ${DIR} or ${PWD} uses with source.

I'm currently unsure if the same should be done for paths to commands and paths passed to exec. But it probably would be the right way to make this consistent...

[BradLugo]

Gotcha, that makes sense. Well, if you end up implementing it, you'll have at least one user of it 🙂