Subject: bug#26181: Remove etags

From: Glenn Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2017 19:15:18 -0400

Package: emacs
Severity: wishlist
Version: 25.2

I've never understood why Emacs includes a tags program.
It's not part of the normal remit of a text editor.

This was previously discussed:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-01/msg00075.html

It sounds like the answer is "historical reasons".
The situation has changed since then in that etags no longer has a
maintainer (IIUC).

I would like to suggest removing etags so that the time saved can be
spent on other things.

Having our own tags program means we can tweak it to work better for our
own code; but conversely it would be better if our code Just Worked with
standard (ie external) tools.