Data

Tools

Indexes

Applications

Experiments

Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags

A maintained ctags implementation
https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags

code-analysis code-completion code-navigation code-reading code-summarization ctags developer-tools tagjumping

Last synced: 5 months ago
JSON representation

A maintained ctags implementation

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

          
# Universal Ctags



[![Coverity Scan Build Status](https://scan.coverity.com/projects/4355/badge.svg)](https://scan.coverity.com/projects/4355)

[![Coverage Status](https://coveralls.io/repos/universal-ctags/ctags/badge.svg?branch=master&service=github)](https://coveralls.io/github/universal-ctags/ctags?branch=master)

[![Build status](https://ci.appveyor.com/api/projects/status/6hk2p5lv6jsrd9o7/branch/master?svg=true)](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/universalctags/ctags/branch/master)

[![RTD build status](https://readthedocs.org/projects/ctags/badge)](https://docs.ctags.io)

[![CircleCI Build Status](https://dl.circleci.com/status-badge/img/gh/universal-ctags/ctags/tree/master.svg?style=svg)](https://dl.circleci.com/status-badge/redirect/gh/universal-ctags/ctags/tree/master)

![GitHub Actions/VALGRIND](https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags/workflows/run%20units%20target%20under%20VALGRIND/badge.svg)

[![Gurubase](https://img.shields.io/badge/Gurubase-Ask%20Universal%20Ctags%20Guru-006BFF)](https://gurubase.io/g/universal-ctags)



[Universal Ctags](https://ctags.io/) (abbreviated as u-ctags) is a *maintained*

implementation of `ctags`.

`ctags` generates an index (or tag) file of language objects found in source

files for programming languages.

This index makes it easy for text editors and other tools to locate the indexed

items.



[Exuberant Ctags](http://ctags.sourceforge.net/) (e-ctags) maintained by Darren

Hiebert, the ancestor of Universal Ctags, improved traditional `ctags` with

multi-language support, the ability for the user to define new languages

searched by regular expressions (called optlib in Universal Ctags), and the

ability to generate emacs-style TAGS files.

But the activity of the project unfortunately stalled.



Universal Ctags has the objective of continuing the development of Exuberant

Ctags.

Reza Jelveh  initially created a personal fork of

Exuberant Ctags on GitHub.

As interest and participation grew, it was decided to move development to a

dedicated project as Universal Ctags.

The goal of this project is to maintain a common/unified working space where

people interested in making ctags better can work together.



Some of the major features of Universal Ctags are:



* more numbers of improved language support

    * new extended C/C++ language parser, etc.

* fully extended optlib (a feature to define a new language parser from a

  command line)

* interactive mode (experimental)



## The latest build and package ##



If you want to try the latest Universal Ctags without building it yourself...



### Windows

Daily builds are available at the [ctags-win32](https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags-win32) project.

Go to the [releases](https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags-win32/releases) page to download zip packages.



### Unix-like

Nightly builds are available at the [ctags-nightly-build](https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags-nightly-build) project.

Go to the [releases](https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags-nightly-build/releases) page to download tarball archives.



### Mac

Recent builds are available via the [`universal-ctags` Homebrew formula](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/universal-ctags).



### Snap

Go to [ctags-snap](https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags-snap) and

clone the `ctags-snap` repo. Then, follow instructions to build the

snap package of Universal Ctags. Snapcraft will automatically fetch the source

code from GitHub.



## How to build and install ##



To build with Autotools (Autoconf and Automake) on GNU/Linux, OSX, or Windows 10 WSL,

```

    $ git clone https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags.git

    $ cd ctags

    $ ./autogen.sh

    $ ./configure  # use --prefix=/where/you/want to override installation directory, defaults to /usr/local

    $ make

    $ make install # may require extra privileges depending on where to install

```



GNU make is assumed as the `make` command.



See

[`docs/autotools.rst`](https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags/blob/master/docs/autotools.rst)

for more information.



To build on Windows, see

[`docs/windows.rst`](https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags/blob/master/docs/windows.rst)

for more information.



To build on OSX, see

[`docs/osx.rst`](https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags/blob/master/docs/osx.rst)

for more information.



## Manual ##

The primary documents of Universal Ctags are man pages.

Users should first consult the

[ctags(1)](https://docs.ctags.io/en/latest/man/ctags.1.html), and [other man

pages](https://docs.ctags.io/en/latest/man-pages.html) if necessary.



[Universal Ctags Hacking Guide](https://docs.ctags.io), which also includes the

man pages, is primarily for developers and provides additional information to

the man pages, including experimental features.



See also `*/README.md` on this repository.



## Differences from exuberant-ctags ##



You may be interested in how Universal Ctags is different from Exuberant Ctags.

See

[ctags-incompatibilities(7)](https://docs.ctags.io/en/latest/man/ctags-incompatibilities.7.html)

and [Introduced changes](https://docs.ctags.io/en/latest/news.html) for details.



The most significant incompatible changes:



* Universal Ctags doesn't load `~/.ctags` and `./.ctags` at starting up time.

  Instead, it loads `~/.ctags.d/*.ctags` and `./.ctags.d/*.ctags`.



* Universal Ctags is more strict about characters that can be

  used in kind letters and kind names than Exuberant-ctags.



  - The letter must be an alphabetical character (`[a-zA-EG-Z]`).

    `F` is reserved for `file` kind.



  - The first character of the name must be alphabetic, and

    the rest characters must be alphanumeric (`[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]*`).



  The detailed background is explained in

  [#1737](https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags/pull/1737).



  If you want to reuse your `.ctags` written for Exuberant-ctags,

  you must review kind letters and names defined with `--regex-=...`

  options. When updating the definitions, using `--kinddef-=...` option

  is appreciated.



## [CVE-2022-4515](https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-4515) ##

It is not affected to Universal Ctags.

It was fixed in [e00c55d7a0204dc1d0ae316141323959e1e16162](https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags/commit/e00c55d7a0204dc1d0ae316141323959e1e16162) in 2016. Thanks to the reporter.



Pull-requests are welcome!