Re: [PATCH] Re: etags name collision.

[Ergus]

On Tue, Apr 12, 2022 at 07:03:23AM +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > > > > > On Tue, 12 Apr 2022, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>
> > > Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2022 21:53:50 +0200
> > > From: Ergus <spacibba@aol.com>
> > > Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > >
> > > >I still think that any test for an installed binary is a bad idea, from
> > > >a distro point of view. Note that distros typically build packages in an
> > > >environment that is different from the one of the final target system.
> > > >
> > > Here I agree
>
> > How else to test whether this is needed?  I'm okay with having
> > "--without-ctags" with no test, but then the default will have to be
> > to install our ctags.
>
> That sounds good.
>
> > With the test, we could refrain from installing it if the test says
> > so.
>
> But then the test should be more specific, and check if there would be a
> file collision at the actual target location (with the name modified by
> --program-transform-name, if applicable). If there's no collision (e.g.
> Emacs ctags has a different name) then Emacs should install it.
If we don't do that with mailutils why should we do it with ctags... It
will be more complex and error prone. I would be even simpler and just
add the option --without-ctags to not build our ctags on demand
unconditionally, keeping things as they are now by default.

as a plus we could make: --with-ctags=no, to not build; and we could
allow to do things like: --with-ctags=ctags.emacs to explicitly create
it as ctags.emacs... But I am sure such method will break some standard
or development agreement.


> > I'm also okay with leaving things as they are now, obviously, if this
> > change brings more problems than it solves.  I don't consider the
> > current situation bad enough to necessitate any changes.
>
> Things are like this since more than a decade, and obviously distros can
> cope with the status quo.

1) Then exuberant ctags was not so popular
2) The popular languages then were very different than today (even C++
was very different then)
3) There was not universal ctags which supports all of them and our formats.