Re: etags name collision.

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: spacibba@aol.com,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2022 13:41:00 -0400
> 
> > I think detecting that another kind of ctags is installed is the best
> > and safest way to have the cake and eat it, too.
> 
> Rather than "install vs not-install" the test could decide "install as
> `ctags` vs install as `somethingelse`", which is closer to having our
> cake and eating it too since the user can then have both installed at
> the same time.

No, the intent is exactly to let users have the program they want
under the name "ctags".  Everything else, including renaming, is left
to the users themsleves, because we have no way of second-guessing
their habits.  And as someone else pointed out, we already support
installing under a different name, if the user knows what is that
name.

> Still, an install-time test has the downside that it won't adapt if
> `ctags` is installed after Emacs is built/installed, as is probably the
> case for most users nowadays (who don't build Emacs themselves but
> install from a distro or from our prebuilt tarballs).

I don't think we need to make too much out of it.  the problem is
easily solved manually, so we just make it a tad easier in one simple
use case.

> BTW, regarding the state of our `ctags` compared to the other ones.
> A few years back I remember someone comparing them and finding out that
> we support fewer languages but that for some of those languages we
> provided better results.  If that's not the case any more, maybe we
> should check to see if we could make `etags.el` use "Exhuberant ctags"
> when available so as to benefit from the better tool.

That, too, is already covered by the installation of Exhuberant and
other variants.