To close the loop:

A better fix (I confirm this iteration of the fix too -- fix for the ggtags
issue[3]) for this was later applied in commit 3d3778d8[1]. See this
emacs-devel thread[2] for discussion that arrived to this conclusion.

[1]:
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?h=emacs-26&id=3d3778d82a87139ef50a24146f5bad2a57a82094
[2]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2017-09/msg00858.html
[3]: https://github.com/leoliu/ggtags/issues/157

-- 

Kaushal Modi