As per Wikipedia definition, Ctags is a programming tool that generates an index (or tag) file of names found in source and header files of various programming languages. Depending on the language, functions, variables, class members, macros and so on may be indexed. These tags allow definitions to be quickly and easily located by a text editor or other utility.

In other words, Ctags indexes a project’s classes, methods, etc in a file called tag. So we can navigate back and forth their declaration and definition in a code editor.

Install Ctags

Install ctag using Homebrew in OS X

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brew install ctags

Or install in Ubuntu

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sudo apt-get install exuberant-ctags

To ignore directories, add them in a .ctags file and place it in your home directory.

This is an example of my .ctags.

Vim Setup

For vim to find tags file, add the following in .vimrc

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set tags=./tags;

Generate tags in you project directory

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ctags -R .

Create git hooks

Every time a change is made in any of the project files, we need to re generate the tags. We can create git hooks which will generate tags on add, commit, checkout, etc.

In your home directory

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mkdir -p ~/.git_template/hooks
git config --global init.templatedir '~/.git_template'

Either download the files and place them inside the hooks directory, or create the following files manually and make them executable.

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touch ctags post-checkout post-commit post-merge post-rewrite pre-commit pre-push prepare-commit-msg
chmod u+x ctags post-checkout post-commit post-merge post-rewrite pre-commit pre-push prepare-commit-msg

Place the following script in ctags files.

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#!/bin/sh
ctags -R --languages=ruby --exclude=.git --exclude=log . $(bundle list --paths)

Place the following script in post-checkout file.

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#!/bin/sh
local_hook="$HOME"/.git_template.local/hooks/post-checkout
[ -f "$local_hook" ] && . "$local_hook"
.git/hooks/ctags >/dev/null 2>&1 &

Place the following script in post-commit file.

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#!/bin/sh
local_hook="$HOME"/.git_template.local/hooks/post-commit
[ -f "$local_hook" ] && . "$local_hook"
.git/hooks/ctags >/dev/null 2>&1 &

Place the following script in post-merge file.

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#!/bin/sh
local_hook="$HOME"/.git_template.local/hooks/post-merge
[ -f "$local_hook" ] && . "$local_hook"
.git/hooks/ctags >/dev/null 2>&1 &

Place the following script in post-rewrite file.

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#!/bin/sh
case "$1" in
  rebase) exec .git/hooks/post-merge ;;
esac

Place the following script in pre-commit file.

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#!/bin/sh
local_hook="$HOME"/.git_template.local/hooks/pre-commit
if [ -f "$local_hook" ]; then
  . "$local_hook"
fi

Place the following script in pre-push file.

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#!/bin/sh
local_hook="$HOME"/.git_template.local/hooks/pre-push
if [ -f "$local_hook" ]; then
  . "$local_hook"
fi

Place the following script in prepare-commit-msg file.

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#!/bin/sh
local_hook="$HOME"/.git_template.local/hooks/prepare-commit-msg
if [ -f "$local_hook" ]; then
  . "$local_hook"
fi