Support for ctags?

[cdecompilador]

[the-mikedavis]

There currently isn't an integration.

The symbol picker from LSP is very similar in nature. As a fallback we could use tree-sitter tags as a naive implementation to do this and stack-graphs (once stabilized) for better accuracy: #1252

IMO ctags could be a plugin rather than a core feature.

[ndcontini]

Yeah, I use ctags for finding definitions and cscope for finding references within a project. Basically in vim I'd c-] to trace code and use :tselect if the wrong definition was selected. Then :pop to do up the stack. Helix approximates this with its LSP support, but if you can't set up the LSP support well, then you're stuck doing global search. Then when I need to find where a symbol is declared, initialized, assigned, etc. I'd use cs find s <symbol> and have all the matches sent to the quickfix window. gr in helix does a decent job, again with the caveat that the LSP needs to be set up well.

It sounds like your solution might resolve some of my issues.

[EricHenry]

@the-mikedavis I work on embedded devices and computers with limited resources. LSPs end up being pretty heavy on those systems (especially rust-analyzer). I will use ctags and cscopes for quick jumping to definitions and finding references. Having the ability to jump to definition without an LSP would be a huge. Honestly, even if its less accurate or can't jump into std libs, it would still be a very large productivity increase.

If you'd be up for providing a bit of direction, and discuss your thoughts on the feature, I'd love to contribute.

[the-mikedavis]

The changes involved are not very involved but the current implementation I have (the-mikedavis@1a31fe9) builds on some other changes that I think we should land first. In particular we're working on new tree-sitter bindings (#10286) and a new highlighter and query API that will allow running queries like this across injections. I'm about to be away for a few weeks but when I return I'll write up an idea discussion about how it should work

[EricHenry]

@the-mikedavis Sounds good to me! feel free to reach out with that discussion or feel free to tag me. Even if I can help out in some of these other efforts that are prerequisites.

[the-mikedavis]

I've opened up #12275 which aims at adding the symbol pickers. Originally I planned to make an issue since it conflicts a bit with changes we have in mind for our tree-sitter bindings (#10286), but I believe the conflicts will be small enough and quite boring (the same as textobjects or indents) so it's no reason to hold the change back

[rahil627]

dang, i just ran into ctags, for the first time ever. ctags for emacs and vim are provided for a specific game scripting language/run-time: dragonruby, a fork of mruby. 😢 i guess because the main game engine dev uses emacs, they never bothered with a lsp...?? though, to their credit, it's a really simple api, in which ctags is actually the perfect simpler solution here. i know i def wouldn't want to upkeep an lsp, in addition to a cross-platform game engine, and a language run-time.