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Helm Gtags contribution layer for Spacemacs

Description
Features
Install
- GNU Global
Usage
- Eldoc integration
Key bindings

Description

helm-gtags and ggtags are clients for GNU Global. GNU Global is a source code tagging system that allows querying symbol locations in source code, such as definitions or references.

Features

Select any tag in a project retrieves by gtags
Resume previous helm-gtags session
Jump to a location based on context
Find definitions
Find references
Present tags in current function only
Create a tag database
Jump to definitions in file
Show stack of visited locations
Manually update tag database
Jump to next location in context stack
Jump to previous location in context stack
Jump to a file in tag database

Install

GNU Global

You can install helm-gtags from the software repository of your OS. For example, in Ubuntu:

  sudo apt-get install global

To use helm-gtags, you first have to install GNU Global.

Download the latest tar.gz archive, then run these commands:

  tar xvf global-6.4.tar.gz
  cd global-6.4
  ./configure
  make
  sudo make install

To be able to use ctags and other backends, you need to copy the sample gtags.conf either to /etc/gtags.conf or $HOME/.globalrc. For example:

  cp gtags.conf ~/.globalrc

To use this contribution add it to your ~/.spacemacs

  (setq-default dotspacemacs-configuration-layers '(gtags))

Usage

Before using the helm-gtags, remember to create a GTAGS database by the following methods:

From within Emacs, runs the command helm-gtags-create-tags, which is bound to SPC m g c. If the language is not directly supported by GNU Global, you can choose ctags or pygment as a backend to generate tag database.
From inside terminal, runs gtags at your project root in terminal:

  cd /path/to/project/root
  gtags

If the language is not directly supported by gtags but ctags, use this command instead:

  gtags --gtagslabel=ctags

Eldoc integration

This layer also integrates ggtags for its Eldoc feature. That means, when writing code, you can look at the minibuffer (at the bottom) and see variable and function definition of the symbol the cursor is on. However, this feature is only activated for programming modes that are not one of these languages:

C mode
C++ mode
Common Lisp
Emacs Lisp
Python
Ruby-mode

In addition, if output from compile (bound to SPC c C), shell-command (bound to SPC ! and M-!) or async-shell-command (bound to M-&) commands contains symbol in your project, you move cursor on such symbol and use any of the gtags commands.

Since these modes have better Eldoc integration already.

Key bindings

Key Binding	Description
`SPC m g c`	create a tag database
`SPC m g f`	jump to a file in tag database
`SPC m g g`	jump to a location based on context
`SPC m g G`	jump to a location based on context (open another window)
`SPC m g d`	find definitions
`SPC m g i`	present tags in current function only
`SPC m g l`	jump to definitions in file
`SPC m g n`	jump to next location in context stack
`SPC m g p`	jump to previous location in context stack
`SPC m g r`	find references
`SPC m g R`	resume previous helm-gtags session
`SPC m g s`	select any tag in a project retrieved by gtags
`SPC m g S`	show stack of visited locations
`SPC m g u`	manually update tag database

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