Go to References always reparses a lot of files for the same symbol

[qianzhangxa]

Environment

• OS and Version: macOS Sequoia 15.2
• VS Code Version: 1.96.2 (Universal)
• C/C++ Extension Version: 1.22.11
• If using SSH remote, specify OS of remote machine: Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS

Bug Summary and Steps to Reproduce

Bug Summary:

I am using VS Code on my macOS to SSH remotely browse Linux Kernel code which I cloned on a Ubuntu Linux machine. When I click Go to References on a symbol, I see a lot of files need to be parsed (like the below) which takes ~10 mins. And next time when I click Go to References on the same symbol again, all those files will be parsed again! So every time it takes ~10 mins to show the references for the same symbol.

Go to Definition doesn't seem to have this problem.

Expected behavior:

I'd expect all the files in the project to be parsed at the very beginning (i.e. when I open the project for the first time) and cache the result somewhere. Reparsing should only be done when there is some code changes.

Configuration and Logs

There is no `c_cpp_properties.json` file in `~/.vscode-server/` on my Ubuntu machine.

Other Extensions

No response

Additional context

No response

[sean-mcmanus]

That is currently "by design" if you have a lot of files with lexical references to a particular symbol. Our current implementation doesn't save references to the database, but we may add that later.

[qianzhangxa]

Thanks @sean-mcmanus for your reply! Do you happen to know when that will be added?

[sean-mcmanus]

@qianzhangxa I do not know. Maybe @bobbrow might be able to give an estimate, but I don't know if that is something we want to publicly disclose.

[bobbrow]

It will be difficult to provide an estimate at this time. The work we are currently doing in this area is best described as "experimental" at this point. It is safe to say that we understand that we have significant inefficiencies with this feature right now and we are working to fix that.

[qianzhangxa]

Thanks @bobbrow, looking forward to the fix.