automatically rebuild TAGS tables on M-.

automatically rebuild TAGS tables on M-.

[Jeff D. Hamann]

I've been using ctags to generate my TAGS table for a project. Is it
possible, using some "global-key-set" like,

(global-set-key [f5] 'goto-line)

to have emacs automatically call ctags -r -e *.* when the user wishes to
visit a tag when pressing M-.?

Jeff.


---
Jeff D. Hamann
Hamann, Donald and Associates, Inc.
PO Box 1421
Corvallis, Oregon USA 97339-1421
(office) 541-753-7333
(cell) 541-740-5988
jeff_hamann@hamanndonald.com
www.hamanndonald.com

Re: automatically rebuild TAGS tables on M-.

[Felix Natter]

"Jeff D. Hamann" <jeff_hamann@hamanndonald.com> writes:

> I've been using ctags to generate my TAGS table for a project. Is it
> possible, using some "global-key-set" like,
>
> (global-set-key [f5] 'goto-line)
>
> to have emacs automatically call ctags -r -e *.* when the user wishes to
> visit a tag when pressing M-.?

(global-set-key "\M-." '(lambda()
                          (interactive)
                          (compile "make tags")
                          (find-tag (find-tag-interactive "Find tag: "))))

If your source is using automake then there's a "tags" target,
which should be preferrable to "ctags -r -e *.*" (as shown above).

If you want to use "ctags -r -e *.*" then you may want to run this
only once per emacs-session (if you have many projects that you want
to use this for then it might be a good idea to make it buffer-local,
as in the code below):

(global-set-key "\M-." '(lambda()
                          (interactive)
                          (when (not my-ctags-is-run)
                            (shell-command "ctags -r -e *.*")
                            (setq my-ctags-is-run t)
                            (make-local-variable 'my-ctags-is-run))
                          (find-tag (find-tag-interactive "Find tag: "))))

(this is not tested)
and no, the above is not a lisp-expression ;-)

-- 
Felix Natter
Linux from *scratch* (www.gnu.org/software/emacs)