path: root/doc/easytags.txt

*easytags.txt*  Automated tag generation and syntax highlighting in Vim

===============================================================================
Contents ~

 1. Introduction                                        |easytags-introduction|
 2. Installation                                        |easytags-installation|
  1. A note about Windows                         |easytags-note-about-windows|
 3. Commands                                                |easytags-commands|
  1. The |:UpdateTags| command
  2. The |:HighlightTags| command
 4. Options                                                  |easytags-options|
  1. The |g:easytags_cmd| option
  2. The |g:easytags_async| option
  3. The |g:easytags_syntax_keyword| option
  4. The |g:easytags_languages| option
  5. The |g:easytags_file| option
  6. The |g:easytags_dynamic_files| option
  7. The |g:easytags_by_filetype| option
  8. The |g:easytags_events| option
  9. The |g:easytags_always_enabled| option
  10. The |g:easytags_on_cursorhold| option
  11. The |g:easytags_updatetime_min| option
  12. The |g:easytags_auto_update| option
  13. The |g:easytags_auto_highlight| option
  14. The |g:easytags_autorecurse| option
  15. The |g:easytags_include_members| option
  16. The |g:easytags_resolve_links| option
  17. The |g:easytags_suppress_ctags_warning| option
 5. Customizing the easytags plug-in             |customizing-easytags-plug-in|
  1. Passing custom command line arguments to Exuberant Ctags |easytags-passing-custom-command-line-arguments-to-exuberant-ctags|
  2. Update & highlight tags immediately after save |easytags-update-highlight-tags-immediately-after-save|
  3. How to customize the highlighting colors? |easytags-how-to-customize-highlighting-colors|
 6. Faster syntax highlighting using Python |easytags-faster-syntax-highlighting-using-python|
  1. The |g:easytags_python_enabled| option
  2. The |g:easytags_python_script| option
 7. Troubleshooting                                  |easytags-troubleshooting|
 8. vim-easytags is slow!                                |vim-easytags-is-slow|
  1. |:HighlightTags| only works for the tags file created by |:UpdateTags| |easytags-highlighttags-only-works-for-tags-file-created-by-updatetags|
  2. The plug-in complains that Exuberant Ctags isn't installed |easytags-plug-in-complains-that-exuberant-ctags-isnt-installed|
  3. Vim locks up while the plug-in is running |easytags-vim-locks-up-while-plug-in-is-running|
  4. Failed to highlight tags because pattern is too big! |easytags-failed-to-highlight-tags-because-pattern-is-too-big|
  5. The plug-in doesn't seem to work in Cygwin |easytags-plug-in-doesnt-seem-to-work-in-cygwin|
 9. Contact                                                  |easytags-contact|
 10. License                                                 |easytags-license|
 11. References                                           |easytags-references|

===============================================================================
                                                        *easytags-introduction*
Introduction ~

Vim has long been my favorite text editor and combined with Exuberant Ctags [1]
it has the potential to provide most of what I expect from an integrated
development environment [2]. Exuberant Ctags is the latest incarnation of a
family of computer programs [3] that scan source code files to create an index
of identifiers (tags) and where they are defined. Vim uses this index (a so-
called tags file) to enable you to jump to the definition of any identifier
using the Control-] (see |CTRL-]|) mapping.

When you're familiar with integrated development environments you may recognize
this feature as "Go-to definition". One advantage of the combination of Vim and
Exuberant Ctags over integrated development environments is that Vim supports
syntax highlighting for over 500 file types [4] (!) and Exuberant Ctags can
generate tags for over 40 file types [5] as well...

There's just one problem: You have to manually keep your tags files up-to-date
and this turns out to be a royal pain in the ass! So I set out to write a Vim
plug-in that would do this boring work for me. When I finished the plug-in's
basic functionality (one automatic command and a call to |system()| later) I
became interested in dynamic syntax highlighting, so I added that as well to
see if it would work -- surprisingly well I'm happy to report!

===============================================================================
                                                        *easytags-installation*
Installation ~

_Please note that the vim-easytags plug-in requires my vim-misc plug-in which
is separately distributed._

Unzip the most recent ZIP archives of the vim-easytags [6] and vim-misc [7]
plug-ins inside your Vim profile directory (usually this is '~/.vim' on UNIX
and '%USERPROFILE%\vimfiles' on Windows), restart Vim and execute the command
':helptags ~/.vim/doc' (use ':helptags ~\vimfiles\doc' instead on Windows).

If you prefer you can also use Pathogen [8], Vundle [9] or a similar tool to
install & update the vim-easytags [10] and vim-misc [11] plug-ins using a local
clone of the git repository.

Now try it out: Edit any file type supported by Exuberant Ctags and within ten
seconds the plug-in should create/update your tags file ('~/.vimtags' on UNIX,
'~/_vimtags' on Windows) with the tags defined in the file you just edited!
This means that whatever file you're editing in Vim (as long as it's on the
local file system), tags will always be available by the time you need them!

Additionally if the file you just opened is an AWK, C#, C, C++, Objective-C,
Java, Lua, PHP, Python, Ruby, Shell, Tcl or Vim source file you should also
notice that the function and type names defined in the file have been syntax
highlighted.

The 'easytags.vim' plug-in is intended to work automatically once it's
installed, but if you want to change how it works there are several options you
can change and commands you can execute from your own mappings and/or automatic
commands. These are all documented below.

Note that if the plug-in warns you 'ctags' isn't installed you'll have to
download it from its homepage [1], or if you're running Debian/Ubuntu you can
install it by executing the following shell command:
>
  $ sudo apt-get install exuberant-ctags
<
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                  *easytags-note-about-windows*
A note about Windows ~

On Windows the |system()| function used by 'easytags.vim' causes a command
prompt window to pop up while Exuberant Ctags is executing. If this bothers you
then you can install my shell.vim [12] plug-in which includes a DLL [13] that
works around this issue. Once you've installed both plug-ins it should work out
of the box! Please let me know if this doesn't work for you.

===============================================================================
                                                            *easytags-commands*
Commands ~

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *:UpdateTags* command

This command executes Exuberant Ctags [1] from inside Vim to update the global
tags file defined by |g:easytags_file|. When no arguments are given the tags
for the current file are updated, otherwise the arguments are passed on to
'ctags'. For example when you execute the Vim command ':UpdateTags -R ~/.vim'
(or ':UpdateTags -R ~\vimfiles' on Windows) the plug-in will execute 'ctags -R
~/.vim' for you (with some additional arguments, see the troubleshooting
section "|:HighlightTags| only works for the tags file created by
|:UpdateTags|" for more information).

When you execute this command like ':UpdateTags!' (including the bang!) then
all tags whose files are missing will be filtered from the global tags file.

Note that this command will be executed automatically every once in a while,
assuming you haven't changed |g:easytags_on_cursorhold|.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *:HighlightTags* command

When you execute this command while editing one of the supported file types
(see above) the relevant tags in the current file are highlighted. The tags to
highlight are gathered from all tags files known to Vim (through the |'tags'|
option).

Note that this command will be executed automatically every once in a while,
assuming you haven't changed |g:easytags_on_cursorhold|.

===============================================================================
                                                             *easytags-options*
Options ~

The easytags plug-in should work out of the box but if you don't like the
default configuration you can change how it works by setting the variables
documented below. Most of these variables can also be changed for specific
files by setting a buffer local variable instead of the global variable. For
example to disable automatic highlighting (enabled by default) only in Python
files you can add the following line to your |vimrc| script:
>
  :autocmd FileType python let b:easytags_auto_highlight = 0
<
Note that buffer local variables always override global variables, so if you
want to undo this for a specific file you have to use |:unlet|:
>
  :unlet b:easytags_auto_highlight
<
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_cmd* option

The plug-in will try to determine the location where Exuberant Ctags is
installed on its own but this might not always work because any given
executable named 'ctags' in your '$PATH' might not in fact be Exuberant Ctags
but some older, more primitive 'ctags' implementation which doesn't support the
same command line options and thus breaks the easytags plug-in. If this is the
case you can set the global variable |g:easytags_cmd| to the location where
you've installed Exuberant Ctags, e.g.:
>
  :let g:easytags_cmd = '/usr/local/bin/ctags'
<
If you rely entirely on language-specific configuration and don't have a
general ctags program, set this to the empty string.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_async* option

By default vim-easytags runs Exuberant Ctags and updates your tags file in the
foreground, blocking Vim in the process. As your tags files get larger this
becomes more annoying. It has been the number one complaint about vim-easytags
since I published the first release online.

In version 3.5 of the vim-easytags plug-in support for asynchronous tags file
updates was added. It's not enabled by default yet because I want to make sure
I'm not breaking the plug-in for the majority of users. However after I've
gathered some feedback I definitely want to make this the default mode.

By setting this option to true (1) you enable asynchronous tags file updates.
Good luck! ;-)

Note that asynchronous updates on Windows currently require the installation of
my vim-shell [12] plug-in (for obscure technical reasons that I want to fix but
don't know how yet).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_syntax_keyword* option

When you look into how the dynamic syntax highlighting in the vim-easytags
plug-in works you'll realize that vim-easytags is really abusing Vim's syntax
highlighting engine. This can cause Vim to slow down to a crawl, depending on
how big your tags files are. To make things worse in Vim 7.4 a new regex engine
was introduced which exacerbates the problem (the patterns generated by vim-
easytags bring out the worst of the new regex engine).

Since version 3.6 the vim-easytags plug-in tries to squeeze as much performance
as possible out of Vim by using keyword highlighting where this is possible
without sacrificing accuracy. If your Vim's syntax highlighting is still too
slow you can add the following to your |vimrc| script:
>
  let g:easytags_syntax_keyword = 'always'
<
The default value of this option is 'auto' which means to use keyword
highlighting where this is possible without sacrificing accuracy. By changing
it to 'always' you're telling vim-easytags to sacrifice accuracy in order to
gain performance. Try it out and see what works best for you.

Please note that right now this 'feature' is not integrated with the
"accelerated Python syntax highlighting" feature, because I'm considering
ripping that out and replacing it with a _fast_ Vim script implementation.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_languages* option

Exuberant Ctags supports many languages and can be extended via regular
expression patterns, but for some languages separate tools with ctags-
compatible output exist (e.g. jsctags [14] for Javascript). To use these, the
executable and its arguments must be configured:
>
  let g:easytags_languages = {
  \   'language': {
  \     'cmd': g:easytags_cmd,
  \       'args': [],
  \       'fileoutput_opt': '-f',
  \       'stdout_opt': '-f-',
  \       'recurse_flag': '-R'
  \   }
  \}
<
Each key is a special language definition. The key is a Vim file type in
lowercase. The above snippet shows the defaults; you only need to specify
options that differ.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_file* option

As mentioned above the plug-in will store your tags in '~/.vimtags' on UNIX and
'~/_vimtags' on Windows. To change the location of this file, set the global
variable |g:easytags_file|, e.g.:
>
  :let g:easytags_file = '~/.vim/tags'
<
A leading '~' in the |g:easytags_file| variable is expanded to your current
home directory ('$HOME' on UNIX, '%USERPROFILE%' on Windows).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_dynamic_files* option

By default |:UpdateTags| only writes to the global tags file, but it can be
configured to look for project specific tags files by adding the following
lines to your |vimrc| script:
>
  :set tags=./tags;
  :let g:easytags_dynamic_files = 1
<
You can change the name of the tags file, the important thing is that it's
relative to your working directory or the buffer (using a leading './'). When
|g:easytags_dynamic_files| is set to 1 the easytags plug-in will write to the
first existing tags file seen by Vim (based on the |'tags'| option). In other
words: If a project specific tags file is found it will be used, otherwise the
plug-in falls back to the global tags file (or a file type specific tags file).

If you set |g:easytags_dynamic_files| to 2 the easytags plug-in will
automatically create project specific tags based on the first name in the
'tags' option. In this mode the the global tags file or file type specific tags
files are only used for directories where you don't have write permissions.

The |'tags'| option is reevaluated each time the plug-in runs, so which tags
file is selected can differ depending on the buffer and working directory.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_by_filetype* option

By default all tags are stored in a global tags file. When the tags file grows
beyond a certain size Vim will be slowed down by the easytags plug-in because
it has to read and process a large number of tags very frequently.

To avoid this problem you can set |g:easytags_by_filetype| to the path of an
existing directory. The easytags plug-in will create separate tags files for
each file type in the configured directory. These tags files are automatically
registered by the easytags plug-in when the file type of a buffer is set.

Note that the |g:easytags_dynamic_files| option takes precedence over this
option.

If you already have a global tags file you can create file type specific tags
files from the global tags file using the command ':TagsByFileType'.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_events* option

This option can be used to customize the events that trigger the automatic
updating and highlighting performed by the easytags plug-in. The
|g:easytags_always_enabled| and |g:easytags_on_cursorhold| options are more
user friendly but limited ways to accomplish the same thing.

Here's an example: Say you want the easytags plug-in to automatically update &
highlight tags for the current file right after you save the file. You can
accomplish this by adding the following line to your |vimrc| script:
>
  :let g:easytags_events = ['BufWritePost']
<
Note that if you set |g:easytags_events| in your |vimrc| script, the values of
the options |g:easytags_always_enabled| and |g:easytags_on_cursorhold| will be
ignored completely.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_always_enabled* option

By default the plug-in automatically generates and highlights tags when you
stop typing for a few seconds (this works using the |CursorHold| automatic
command). This means that when you edit a file, the dynamic highlighting won't
appear until you pause for a moment. If you don't like this you can configure
the plug-in to always enable dynamic highlighting:
>
  :let g:easytags_always_enabled = 1
<
Be warned that after setting this option you'll probably notice why it's
disabled by default: Every time you edit a file in Vim, the plug-in will first
run Exuberant Ctags and then highlight the tags, and this slows Vim down quite
a lot. I have some ideas on how to improve this latency by running Exuberant
Ctags in the background so stay tuned!

Note: If you change this option it won't apply until you restart Vim, so you'll
have to set this option in your |vimrc| script.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_on_cursorhold* option

As I explained above the plug-in by default doesn't update or highlight your
tags until you stop typing for a moment. The plug-in tries hard to do the least
amount of work possible in this break but it might still interrupt your
workflow. If it does you can disable the periodic update:
>
  :let g:easytags_on_cursorhold = 0
<
Note: Like the |g:easytags_always_enabled| option, if you change this option it
won't apply until you restart Vim, so you'll have to set this option in your
|vimrc| script.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_updatetime_min* option

Vim's |'updatetime'| option controls how often the easytags plug-in is
automatically executed. A lot of popular Vim plug-ins manipulate this option to
control how often they are called. Unfortunately some of those plug-ins set
|'updatetime'| to a very low value (less than a second) and this can break the
easytags plug-in. Because of this the easytags plug-in compensates by keeping
track of when it was last executed.

The default value of Vim's 'updatetime (see |'updatetime'|) option _and_ the
|g:easytags_updatetime_min| option is 4000 milliseconds (4 seconds).

If you know what you're doing and you really want the easytags plug-in to be
executed more than once every 4 seconds you can lower the minimum acceptable
updatetime by setting |g:easytags_updatetime_min| to the number of milliseconds
(an integer).

Note that although |g:easytags_updatetime_min| counts in milliseconds, the
easytags plug-in does not support subsecond granularity because it is limited
by Vim's |localtime()| function which has one-second resolution.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_auto_update* option

By default the plug-in automatically updates and highlights your tags when you
stop typing for a moment. If you want to disable automatic updating while
keeping automatic highlighting enabled you can set this option to false:
>
  :let g:easytags_auto_update = 0
<
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_auto_highlight* option

By default the plug-in automatically updates and highlights your tags when you
stop typing for a moment. If you want to disable automatic highlighting while
keeping automatic updating enabled you can set this option to false:
>
  :let g:easytags_auto_highlight = 0
<
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_autorecurse* option

When the |:UpdateTags| command is executed automatically or without arguments,
it defaults to updating just the tags for the current file. If you'd rather
have it recursively scan everything below the directory of the current file
then set this option to true (1):
>
  :let g:easytags_autorecurse = 1
<
You have to explicitly enable this option because it should only be used while
navigating around small directory trees. Imagine always having this option
enabled and then having to edit a file in e.g. the root of your home directory:
The 'easytags.vim' plug-in would freeze Vim for a long time while you'd have to
wait for Exuberant Ctags to scan thousands of files...

Note that when you enable this option the 'easytags.vim' plug-in might ignore
other options like |g:easytags_resolve_links|. This is an implementation detail
which I intend to fix.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_include_members* option

Exuberant Ctags knows how to generate tags for struct/class members in C++ and
Java source code but doesn't do so by default because it can more than double
the size of your tags files, thus taking much longer to read/write the tags
file. When you enable the |g:easytags_include_members| option from your |vimrc|
script (before the 'easytags.vim' plug-in is loaded):
>
  :let g:easytags_include_members = 1
<
Exuberant Ctags will be instructed to include struct/class members using the '
--extra=+q' command line argument and the 'easytags.vim' plug-in will highlight
them using the 'cMember' highlighting group. Because most color schemes don't
distinguish the Identifier and Type (see |group-name|) highlighting groups all
members will now probably look like type definitions. You can change that by
executing either of the following Vim commands (from your vimrc script, a file
type plug-in, etc.):
>
  " If you like one of the existing styles you can link them:
  highlight link cMember Special
  
  " You can also define your own style if you want:
  highlight cMember gui=italic
<
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_resolve_links* option

UNIX has symbolic links [15] and hard links [16], both of which conflict with
the concept of having one unique location for every identifier. With regards to
hard links there's not much anyone can do, but because I use symbolic links
quite a lot I've added this option. It's disabled by default since it has a
small performance impact and might not do what unknowing users expect it to:
When you enable this option the plug-in will resolve symbolic links in
pathnames, which means your tags file will only contain entries with canonical
pathnames [17]. To enable this option (which I strongly suggest doing when you
run UNIX and use symbolic links) execute the following Vim command:
>
  :let g:easytags_resolve_links = 1
<
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_suppress_ctags_warning* option

If this is set and not false, it will suppress the warning on startup if ctags
is not found or not recent enough.
>
  :let g:easytags_suppress_ctags_warning = 1
<
===============================================================================
                                                 *customizing-easytags-plug-in*
Customizing the easytags plug-in ~

Advanced users may wish to customize how the easytags plug-in works beyond the
point of changing configuration defaults. This section contains some hints
about this. If you have suggestions, please feel free to submit them.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            *easytags-passing-custom-command-line-arguments-to-exuberant-ctags*
Passing custom command line arguments to Exuberant Ctags ~

You may want to run Exuberant Ctags with specific command line options, for
example the code_complete [18] plug-in requires the signature field to be
present. To do this you can create a configuration file for Exuberant Ctags,
e.g. '~/.ctags' on UNIX or '%USERPROFILE%\ctags.cnf' on Windows. The file
should contain one command line option per line. See the Exuberant Ctags manual
[19] for details.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                        *easytags-update-highlight-tags-immediately-after-save*
Update & highlight tags immediately after save ~

By default the easytags plug-in automatically updates & highlights tags for the
current file after several seconds of inactivity. This is done to prevent the
easytags plug-in from interrupting your workflow.

If you want the easytags plug-in to automatically update & highlight tags for
the current file right after you save the file, you can add the following line
to your |vimrc| script:
>
  :let g:easytags_events = ['BufWritePost']
<
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                *easytags-how-to-customize-highlighting-colors*
How to customize the highlighting colors? ~

The easytags plug-in defines new highlighting groups for dynamically
highlighted tags. These groups are linked to Vim's default groups so that
they're colored out of the box, but if you want you can change the styles. To
do so use a 'highlight' command such as the ones given a few paragraphs back.
Of course you'll need to change the group name. Here are the group names used
by the easytags plug-in:

- **AWK**: 'awkFunctionTag'
- **C#:**'csClassOrStructTag', 'csMethodTag'
- **C, C++, Objective C:**'cTypeTag', 'cEnumTag', 'cPreProcTag',
  'cFunctionTag', 'cMemberTag'
- **Java:**'javaClassTag', 'javaInterfaceTag', 'javaMethodTag'
- **Lua:**'luaFuncTag'
- **PHP:**'phpFunctionsTag', 'phpClassesTag'
- **Python:**'pythonFunctionTag', 'pythonMethodTag', 'pythonClassTag'
- **Ruby:**'rubyModuleNameTag', 'rubyClassNameTag', 'rubyMethodNameTag'
- **Shell**: 'shFunctionTag'
- **Tcl**: 'tclCommandTag'
- **Vim:**'vimAutoGroupTag', 'vimCommandTag', 'vimFuncNameTag',
  'vimScriptFuncNameTag'

As you can see each of these names ends in 'Tag' to avoid conflicts with the
syntax modes shipped with Vim. And about the singular/plural confusion: I've
tried to match the existing highlighting groups defined by popular syntax modes
(except of course for the 'Tag' suffix).

===============================================================================
                             *easytags-faster-syntax-highlighting-using-python*
Faster syntax highlighting using Python ~

The Vim script implementation of dynamic syntax highlighting is quite slow on
large tags files. When the Python Interface to Vim is enabled the easytags
plug-in will therefor automatically use a Python script that performs dynamic
syntax highlighting about twice as fast as the Vim script implementation. The
following options are available to change the default configuration.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_python_enabled* option

To disable the Python implementation of dynamic syntax highlighting you can set
this option to false (0).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The *g:easytags_python_script* option

This option defines the pathname of the script that contains the Python
implementation of dynamic syntax highlighting.

===============================================================================
                                                     *easytags-troubleshooting*
Troubleshooting ~

===============================================================================
                                                         *vim-easytags-is-slow*
vim-easytags is slow! ~

Yes, I know. I'm trying to make it faster but that's far from trivial. In the
process of trying to speed up vim-easytags I've added reporting of elapsed time
in several ways. If Vim seems very slow and you suspect this plug-in might be
the one to blame, increase Vim's verbosity level:
>
  :set vbs=1
<
Every time the plug-in executes it will time how long the execution takes and
add the results to Vim's message history, which you can view by executing the
|:messages| command. If you want a more fine grained impression of the time
spent by vim-easytags on various operations you can call the
'xolox#easytags#why_so_slow()' function:
>
  :call xolox#easytags#why_so_slow()
  easytags.vim 3.6.4: Timings since you started Vim:
   - 0.094937 seconds updating tags
   - 1.850201 seconds highlighting tags
   - 0.035167 seconds highlighting tags using ':syntax match')
   - 0.493910 seconds highlighting tags using ':syntax keyword')
   - 0.413160 seconds filtering tags for highlighting (stage 1)
   - 0.141747 seconds filtering tags for highlighting (stage 2)
<
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        *easytags-highlighttags-only-works-for-tags-file-created-by-updatetags*
:HighlightTags only works for the tags file created by :UpdateTags ~

If you want to create tags files and have their tags highlighted by the
'easytags.vim' plug-in then you'll have to create the tags file with certain
arguments to Exuberant Ctags:
>
  $ ctags --fields=+l --c-kinds=+p --c++-kinds=+p ...
<
The '--fields=+l' argument makes sure that Exuberant Ctags includes a
'language:...' property with each entry in the tags file. This is required by
the |:HighlightTags| command so it can filter tags by their file type. The
other two arguments make sure Exuberant Ctags generates tags for function
prototypes in C/C++ source code.

If you have the |g:easytags_include_members| option enabled (its off by
default) then you'll also need to add the '--extra=+q' argument so that
Exuberant Ctags generates tags for structure/class members.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
               *easytags-plug-in-complains-that-exuberant-ctags-isnt-installed*
The plug-in complains that Exuberant Ctags isn't installed ~

After a Mac OS X user found out the hard way that the 'ctags' executable isn't
always Exuberant Ctags and we spend a few hours debugging the problem I added
proper version detection: The plug-in executes 'ctags --version' when Vim is
started to verify that Exuberant Ctags 5.5 or newer is installed. If it isn't
Vim will show the following message on startup:
>
  easytags.vim: Plug-in not loaded because Exuberant Ctags isn't installed!
  Please download & install Exuberant Ctags from http://ctags.sf.net
<
If the installed Exuberant Ctags version is too old the plug-in will complain:
>
  easytags.vim: Plug-in not loaded because Exuberant Ctags 5.5
  or newer is required while you have version %s installed!
<
If you have the right version of Exuberant Ctags installed but the plug-in
still complains, try executing the following command from inside Vim:
>
  :!which ctags
<
If this doesn't print the location where you installed Exuberant Ctags it means
your system already had a 'ctags' executable but it isn't compatible with
Exuberant Ctags 5.5 and you'll need to set the |g:easytags_cmd| option (see
above) so the plug-in knows which 'ctags' to run.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                               *easytags-vim-locks-up-while-plug-in-is-running*
Vim locks up while the plug-in is running ~

Once or twice now in several years I've experienced Exuberant Ctags getting
into an infinite loop when given garbage input. In my case this happened by
accident a few days ago :-|. Because my plug-in executes 'ctags' in the
foreground this will block Vim indefinitely! If this happens you might be able
to kill 'ctags' by pressing Control-C (see |CTRL-C|) but if that doesn't work
you can also kill it without stopping Vim using a task manager or the 'pkill'
command (available on most UNIX systems):
>
  $ pkill -KILL ctags
<
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 *easytags-failed-to-highlight-tags-because-pattern-is-too-big*
Failed to highlight tags because pattern is too big! ~

If the 'easytags.vim' plug-in fails to highlight your tags and the error
message mentions that the pattern is too big, your tags file has grown too
large for Vim to be able to highlight all tagged identifiers! I've had this
happen to me with 50 KB patterns because I added most of the headers in
'/usr/include/' to my tags file. Internally Vim raises the error |E339|:
Pattern too long and unfortunately the only way to avoid this problem once it
occurs is to reduce the number of tagged identifiers...

In my case the solution was to move most of the tags from '/usr/include/' over
to project specific tags files which are automatically loaded by Vim when I
edit files in different projects because I've set the |'tags'| option as
follows:
>
  :set tags=./.tags;,~/.vimtags
<
Once you've executed the above command, Vim will automatically look for a file
named '.tags' in the directory of the current file. Because of the ';' Vim also
recurses upwards so that you can nest files arbitrarily deep under your project
directories.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                               *easytags-plug-in-doesnt-seem-to-work-in-cygwin*
The plug-in doesn't seem to work in Cygwin ~

If you want to use the plug-in with Vim under Cygwin [20], you need to have the
Cygwin version of Ctags installed instead of the Windows version (thanks to
Alex Zuroff for reporting this!).

===============================================================================
                                                             *easytags-contact*
Contact ~

If you have questions, bug reports, suggestions, etc. the author can be
contacted at peter@peterodding.com. The latest version is available at
http://peterodding.com/code/vim/easytags/ and http://github.com/xolox/vim-
easytags. If you like this plug-in please vote for it on Vim Online [21].

===============================================================================
                                                             *easytags-license*
License ~

This software is licensed under the MIT license [22]. Š 2014 Peter Odding
<peter@peterodding.com> and Ingo Karkat.

Thanks go out to everyone who has helped to improve the vim-easytags plug-in
(whether through pull requests, bug reports or personal e-mails).

===============================================================================
                                                          *easytags-references*
References ~

[1] http://ctags.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctags
[4] http://ftp.vim.org/vim/runtime/syntax/
[5] http://ctags.sourceforge.net/languages.html
[6] http://peterodding.com/code/vim/downloads/easytags.zip
[7] http://peterodding.com/code/vim/downloads/misc.zip
[8] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2332
[9] https://github.com/gmarik/vundle
[10] http://github.com/xolox/vim-easytags
[11] http://github.com/xolox/vim-misc
[12] http://peterodding.com/code/vim/shell/
[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic-link_library
[14] https://npmjs.org/package/jsctags
[15] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link
[16] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_link
[17] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonicalization
[18] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1764
[19] http://ctags.sourceforge.net/ctags.html#FILES
[20] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygwin
[21] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3114
[22] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License

vim: ft=help