spacemacs/contrib/gtags

Helm Gtags contribution layer for Spacemacs

Table of Contents

• Helm Gtags contribution layer for Spacemacs
  • Description
  • Features
  • Install
    • GNU Global
  • Usage
  • 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 link.

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 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

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