Excluding directories in Exuberant CTags

Question

I'm working with a very large code base and I find it useful to be selective about which directories are included for use with Exuberant Ctags.

The --exclude option works well to eliminate individual file and directory names (with globing wildcards), but I can't figure out how to get it to exclude path patterns containing more than one directory.

For example, I may want to exclude a directory tests, but only when processing thirdparty\tests (under Windows). The problem is if I just use --exclude=tests I exclude too many directories, including a test directory in the code I'm actively working on.

Here are some things I've tried:

--exclude=thirdparty\tests
--exclude=thirdparty\\tests
--exclude=*\thirdparty\tests
--exclude=*\\thirdparty\\tests
--exclude=thirdparty/tests

Ctags silently ignores all these as evidenced by an examination of the tags file.

How can I exclude a directory only when it is preceded by a given parent directory?

ADDED:

Here's my ctags --version output:

Exuberant Ctags 5.8, Copyright (C) 1996-2009 Darren Hiebert
  Compiled: Jul  9 2009, 17:05:35
  Addresses: <[email protected]>, http://ctags.sourceforge.net
  Optional compiled features: +win32, +regex, +internal-sort

Edwinaedwine

Does ctags --version show +wildcards in the output? – Mooncalf

@sarnold: Hmmm, nope! So you think one of the *\thirdparty\tests would work if I had that option? – Edwinaedwine

Yeah, it probably would -- but I wouldn't know how to go about getting the wildcards support under Windows. (Having a /bin/sh installed when compiling it might be sufficient.) – Mooncalf

I had originally answered you question as if you only wanted to exluded a few directories. I think your best be it to use --exclude option to use a file with the names of the directories you want to exlude. its in the manual I think all you need to do is put an @ in front of the filename – Highball

@Will: Thanks, this was a while ago, but I think I wrote a Python script to filter exactly as I needed, wrote that to a file, and used @ as you alluded. – Edwinaedwine

The manual also notes that you should quote wildcards when they are supported (otherwise the shell expands them). – Operant

Possible duplicate of How to exclude multiple directories with Exuberant ctags? – Palladian

@CiroSantilli刘晓波死六四事件法轮功, note that this question was asked first. The other question is the duplicate. – Edwinaedwine

@CodieCodeMonkey hi Codie, Current consensus is to close by "quality": meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147643/… Since "quality" is not measurable, I just go by upvotes. ;-) Likely it comes down to which question hit the best newb Google keywords on the title. – Palladian

Answer 1

At some point it might be easier to define the list of files you do want indexed; save that list to a file, and use ctags -L <filename> to index just the chosen few.

This lets you use find(1) to prune the directories you don't want to index, e.g.:

find . -path ./Documentation -prune -o -print > indexme

would skip all the files in all subdirectories of ./Documentation.

Mooncalf

You'll have to get a version of find for Windows though. – Leasehold

Or scrap together something Good Enough if find(1) is too hard to port. You really just need a list of file names, not the full functionality of find(1). – Mooncalf

+1 that's a good suggestion, I can use a tool to generate a list of directories I want, which will give me more filtering options beyond the ones I asked for. Today, I'm too lazy. :-) – Edwinaedwine

Lazy is good; it makes you look for new ways to solve problems. :) – Mooncalf

Could someone do a noob step-by-step of this process? Tnx – Nuncle

@JoseBrowne: I think the consensus is to use a two-step process: first run a tool to build a file for ctags to consume, then run ctags and reference that file. The choice of tools is up to you. If you generate a list of files to include, you can use the -L option as Sarnold suggested, or if you generate a list of options--notably --exclude options--you can use ctags @<file> to read this options as if you had typed them all at the command line. – Edwinaedwine

I prefer find . -type f -not -path './Documentation/*' because it's more intuitive and less obscure – Anzus

Answer 2

ack -f | ctags -L -

ack will list the source files in a given dir. You can limit the scope to a specific language with ack -f --ruby or ack -f --type=ruby. You can exclude dirs as well with --ignore-dir.

Use ack --dump to see the built-in file types for ack.

Matney

That rocks. This never occurred to me. – Coypu

Great answer. I used git ls-files | ctags -L - – Permanganate

Answer 3

ctags -R --exclude="thirdparty/test/**"

use "dir/**" fix my case

Leticia