GNU bug report logs - #76322
Make ctags a thin wrapper around etags

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Message #75 received at 76322 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>, Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 76322 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, rms <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#76322: Make ctags a thin wrapper around etags
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2025 14:02:43 -0400

Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu> writes:

> On 2025-03-11 05:11, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> If we think our ctags is not being used (I suggested to query a few
>> distros about that), I'd rather drop it entirely, first by adding the
>> --ctags option to etags, and later maybe removing the ctags-only code
>> from etags.c.
>
> That would be simpler, yes. Proposed patch attached.
>
> My impression is that distros generally prefer Universal Ctags these
> days, though you can use Exuberant Ctags if you're old-fashioned or
> Emacs ctags if your even older-fashioned. On Fedora, 'ctags' is
> Universal Ctags; on Ubuntu all three variants are available as options
> and /usr/bin/ctags is a symlink to /etc/alternatives/ctags which in turn
> can link to /usr/bin/ctags-universal or /usr/bin/ctags-exuberant or
> /usr/bin/ctags.emacs.
>
> To some extent it's a chicken-and-egg problem: if we keep shipping ctags
> some distros will keep making it available as an option. But there's no
> real need for us to keep maintaining the third (and oldest) variant.

Makes sense to me.

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