bug#45246: 28.0.50; etags assertion error

["Francesco Potortì" <pot@gnu.org>]

Gregor:
>> I confirm -I avoids the assertion.
>> I must admit, I did not read the man pager closely but
>> anyway I wouldn't have understood the consequences of
>> setting vs not setting -I.  Perhaps the documentation could
>> be amended somehow?
>
>> I assume this is a trade-of between speed and robustness?

Eli:
>No, I think it's more about the correctness of the produced TAGS file
>than about speed.  etags's C/C++ parser is extremely naïve and largely
>ignores the complicated syntax of the C dialects.  So using the
>"closing brace in column zero ends all top-level definitions"
>heuristic is useful for preventing 'etags' from being utterly confused
>by some sophisticated use of C/C++ facilities, such as macros and the
>more arcane syntactic constructs in modern C++: it makes sure the
>confusion ends as early as possible.
>
>> I do not have objections to closing this bug
>> report, but I wonder why etags treats closing braces in
>> the first column special if it does not speed up things?
>
>See above.  Whether this is a real problem, I don't know.  I think
>the only way to tell is to try.  At least with our test suite for
>'etags', using -I causes regressions, e.g. in cp-src/c.C some tags are
>not created.  So I think having this heuristic on by default is a good
>thing, overall.

I second all of Eli's statements.