Vim: Difficulty setting up ctags. Source in subdirectories don't see tags file in project root
VimCtagsVim Problem Overview
I'm trying to get setup with (exuberant) ctags on Vim today and am having difficulty getting it to work properly. I generate my ctags file on the command line with with:
cd myproj
ctags -R
This puts the tags file in myproj root. However, Vim only seems to read from this tags file when I'm working on source that reside in root. As I navigate to deeper directories, if I try to jump to a tag using <C-]>, I get:
E433: No tags file
E426: tag not found: MyClassName
I've verified that MyClassName does have a tag in the tags file, it's just that Vim doesn't see it. Can someone please explain how to configure Vim to reference the root's tags file?
Thanks.
Vim Solutions
Solution 1 - Vim
add this to .vimrc file set tags=tags;/
This will check the current folder for tags file and keep going one directory up all the way to the root folder.
So you can be in any sub-folder in your project and it'll be able to find the tags files.
Solution 2 - Vim
There is an option to tell Vim where to look for tag file.
I use the following configuration:
" search first in current directory then file directory for tag file
set tags=tags,./tags
Extract from help :
>When a tag file name starts with "./", the '.' is replaced with the path of the current file. This makes it possible to use a tags file in the directory where the current file is (no matter what the current directory is). The idea of using "./" is that you can define which tag file is searched first: In the current directory ("tags,./tags") or in the directory of the current file ("./tags,tags").
> For example: :set tags=./tags,tags,/home/user/commontags
And I keep my current working directory in the top project directory where my tagsfile is generated.
Use :pwd and then :cd myproj (inside Vim) to go to the directory containing your tags file.
See :help tags-option for more information on tags path.
You issue is probably that you are either in the wrong directory, or your tags option is not properly set.
Solution 3 - Vim
#!/bin/sh
FREEZE_NAME=/* Give some version number */
mkdir $HOME/ctags/$FREEZE_NAME
V1=/* Software Path */
find $V1 -name "*.h" | xargs /usr/local/bin/ctags -a -f $HOME/ctags/$FREEZE_NAME/h.tags
find $V1 -name "*.c" | xargs /usr/local/bin/ctags -a -f $HOME/ctags/$FREEZE_NAME/c.tags
cd $HOME/ctags/$FREEZE_NAME/
rm -f all.tags
cat c.tags h.tags >> all.tags
sort all.tags > temp.tags
mv temp.tags all.tags
rm -f c.tags h.tags
Put the above code in a .sh file and run... This will generate your tags for sure.
Solution 4 - Vim
If you generate a tags file for every project, you might like this pattern, especially if you share your .vimrc across different machines:
let repohome=substitute($REPO_HOME, "\/", "\\\\/", "g")
let &tags=substitute(expand("%:p:h"), "\\(".repohome."/.\\{-}\/\\).*", "\\1tags", "")
You would then have to set the environment variable $REPO_HOME in your .bashrc to your main repo directory without the trailing space (e.g. /home/<yourusername>/repos) and it will automatically look for a tags file in each subdirectory of $REPO_HOME with a depth of 1, e.g. /home/<yourusername>/repos/myproj/tags.
Solution 5 - Vim
Create a .sh file with below code. And run .sh file where you want tags. That will work for sure.
#!/bin/sh`enter code here`
filelist=`mktemp`
find . -name \*.h >> ${filelist}
find . -name \*.c >> ${filelist}
find . -name \*.cc >> ${filelist}
find . -name \*.cpp >> ${filelist}
find . -name \*.hpp >> ${filelist}
if [ "$SDKTARGETSYSROOT" != "" ]; then
find $SDKTARGETSYSROOT/usr/include -name \*.h >> ${filelist}
fi
cat ${filelist} | ctags -L -