Re: Can 'make ctags' create tags in top_builddir?

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Rhys,

* Rhys Ulerich wrote on Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 01:10:04AM CEST:
> I noticed that the default 'make tags' target creates a toplevel TAGS
> file that includes all the TAGS files in subdirectories.  This is
> goodness.  At least on automake 1.10.1 it seems that a similar,
> toplevel tags file is not created for the 'make ctags' target.  Is
> this because ctags does not support an inclusion mechanism?

Right.

> Could the ctags -a argument (or some other mechanism) be used to
> simulate the inclusion mechanism?

AFAIK there is no such mechanism in ctags files, nor in vi or its clones
who read tags files.

With Exuberant Ctags, I've come to just use 'ctags -R $(srcdir) .' in
the toplevel build tree.  But -R is not POSIX (and has a different
meaning for emacs ctags, for example).  I'm not sure how to make the
support in Automake more useful.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Ralf