find references not working when module not imported

[dprophete]

I ran into an issue where find references missed a reference.

The simplest repro step involves 3 files:

• Main.elm: defines alias Person, with field firstName
• Group.elm: defines alias Group, which contains a Person (so Group.elm import Main.elm)
• Utils.elm: defines a function which takes a Group and accesses group.person.firstName (Utils.elm only needs to import Group.elm, not Main.elm)

The issue is a find references on firstName misses the usage in Utils.elm. Note that if we import Main.elm in Utils.elm, then it gets detected properly.

---

Main.elm:

module Main exposing (..)

import Html exposing (Html, span, text)
import Html.Attributes exposing (class)


type alias Person =
    -- doing a 'find references' on firstName here won't detect the fact that it is referenced in Utils.elm
    { firstName : String }


main : Html a
main =
    span [ class "welcome-message" ] [ text "Hello, World!" ]

---

Group.elm:

module Group exposing (..)

import Main exposing (Person)


type alias Group =
    { person : Person }

---

Utils.elm:

module Utils exposing (..)

import Group exposing (Group)


{-| the key part is that even though we access group.person.firstname, we never import Person in this file.
As a result, when we try to 'find references' on 'firstName', it doesn't detect the reference in this file.

Note that if you add 'import Main exposing (Person)' then the reference is found

-}
getFirstName : Group -> String
getFirstName group =
    group.person.firstName

---

my setup:

- latest neovim (compiled a few days ago)
- latest coc.nvim (0.0.80-f6a947a8eb)
- latest elm-language-server (compiled from the main branch on git an hour ago)
- node v14.17.6
- on a M1 mac, running monterey 12.1