Subject: bug#20629: 25.0.50; Regression: TAGS broken, can't find anything in C++ files.

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 May 2015 11:09:08 +0300

> From: Glenn Morris <[email-masked]>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>,  [email-masked]
> Date: Fri, 29 May 2015 02:48:57 -0400
> 
> Dmitry Gutov wrote:
> 
> > If you want my opinion (please keep in mind: not an etags user),
> > following in Exuberant Ctags's footsteps sounds best.
> 
> I'm not one either, but I've been meaning to ask: why is etags in Emacs?

The answer to that is lost in history (for me).  Perhaps Richard and
Francesco (cc'ed) will remember.

But since it is here, it is, IMO, a Good Thing, because we can easily
affect its operation where it's important to us.  Especially lately,
when the front-end was changed, and the new one has different
expectations.

> It's my (superficial) impression that etags hasn't progressed much since
> then. The majority of the changes seem to have been generic code-cleanup
> stuff.

That's not true, there were a couple of non-trivial changes lately
that are not cleanups, and I think there will be one more soon.  This
thread discusses some of them, the other one is discussed here:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-05/msg00291.html

> Is it that etags recognizes Emacs-specific C code that ctags does not?

Which ctags do you allude to here?  There are quite a few of them out
there.

> My only motivation for asking is that it's good to reduce the number of
> things that need to be maintained in Emacs, where possible.

I don't think we should remove this one, no.