Backpatching make_ctags -e and -n to v15 and v14

Hi,

On Thu, Apr 09, 2026 at 11:10:55AM +0900, Michael Paquier wrote:

While doing some work on back branches lately, I have been annoyed by
the fact that the improvements done in make_ctags as of d1e2a380cb91
are not available in REL_14_STABLE and REL_15_STABLE. I don't really
use the -n mode, but the emacs mode covered by -e has been a
time-saver for some time now, and it's sad to have only that available
in v16~.

Oh I missed the addition of the -n mode.

Honestly the creation of the symlinks in all the subdirectories is the main
reason why I never used the make_ctags script (and just used some local stuff
instead), so since I now know that I can use it strong +1 to backporting that
commit to v14 and v15.

On Thu, Apr 09, 2026 at 10:42:55AM +0800, Julien Rouhaud wrote:

Oh I missed the addition of the -n mode.

I have switched my stuff to use -n just a few hours ago with a trick
to tell emacs to look at the root of a git folder if we are in a git
repo for the location of a TAGS file:
(setq tags-table-list nil)
(defun my/set-tags-table-to-git-root ()
"Set TAGS file path to the root of the current git repository."
(let ((git-root (string-trim-right
(shell-command-to-string "git rev-parse --show-toplevel"))))
(when (and git-root (not (string-match-p "fatal" git-root)))
(setq tags-file-name (expand-file-name "TAGS" git-root)))))
(add-hook 'find-file-hook #'my/set-tags-table-to-git-root)

Perhaps there is a smarter way to set that, no idea. This works quite
nicely for me.

Honestly the creation of the symlinks in all the subdirectories is the main
reason why I never used the make_ctags script (and just used some local stuff
instead), so since I now know that I can use it strong +1 to backporting that
commit to v14 and v15.

Thanks. This is going to save time for the two of us, at least, so
done :)
--
Michael