Re: gtags/ctags/etags/cscope support?

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2019 17:06:24 +0100
> From: Ergus <spacibba@aol.com>
> 
> Some days ago Stefan was talking about ebrowse but now it makes me
> think.
> 
> Between global/gtags/ctags/etags/cscope which of them has been (|| will
> be) better supported in emacs. Because there are many packages around
> but I can't estimate their popularity.
> 
> Is it there any internal support for any of them within emacs? Is the
> ggtags package actively maintained? 
> 
> Because I want to invest some time in one of them to improve the support
> for tramp and ivy.
> 
> Which of them has more potential in your opinion?

It would indeed be interesting to have a comparison table of features
in one place.  Then we could try to figure out what we want to
support.  I'm guessing no single tool in its current form will do.

I can help with the little I know:

  . etags includes support for many languages (see the list at the end
    of what "etags --help" displays), including some "languages", like
    HTML, which aren't really programming languages.  However, support
    for some of the languages is very basic.  Also, etags is only
    partially useful for C++.

  . ebrowse supports C++, but it wasn't updated for new C++ features
    in a very long time, so it probably is not really up to job
    nowadays.

For inclusion in Emacs, we should also consider whether it will be
possible to get copyright assignment from the contributors.

Thanks.