easytags isn't creating tags for c++ class

[ramon-oliveira]

Here is my .vimtags file:

And it's possible to see that it's not highlighting my class in my file test.cpp :

Anyone knows how to solve this?

[ghost]

I got this problem also. The tags file marks all these files as C instead of C++ and classes are no longer highlighted anymore. I am not sure, but if I remember correctly, this has happened since b6f8757d004d5f4ef7280fd111a21821e6bee79a or even earlier.

[ghost]

I just did a bisect and found the problem starts at b6f8757 exactly.

[ghost]

A quick test. If you set g:easytags_syntax_keyword to anything other than "auto" or "always", you will get your class highlighting back. But here comes another problem: if you have a function or member that has a class name within (like "class PDB{}; void toPDBFormat()"), then the highlight will mis-highlighting the class name in between (like "PDB" in "toPDBFormat" will be marked as a class, while other parts remain black).

[ghost]

The changes ( b6f8757 ) in xolox#easytags#define_tagkind about a:object.pattern_prefix and a:object.pattern_suffix causes the mis-highlighting problem. I guess this is used in syntax_keyword approach.

[ghost]

Please ignore those part. Those are fixed in the HEAD.

Disable the syntax keyword method by setting g:easytags_syntax_keyword to anything except "auto" or "always" fixes the problem.

[ghost]

For ctags generating C tags for C++ files, I just changed autoload/xolox/easytags.vim: s:prep_cmdline (line 238) to call xolox#easytags#filetypes#to_ctags instead of xolox#easytags#filetypes#canonicalize, and it works. Probably it is better to change line 267 to let filetype = xolox#easytags#filetypes#to_ctags(&filetype), but I am not sure.

[ramon-oliveira]

I made the changes that you indicated in the last post, and it works. Thanks a lot.

[harnold]

Because 'cpp' is added to the 'c' group in autoload/xolox/easytags/filetypes.vim, the function xolox#easytags#filetypes#canonicalize() returns 'c' when called with filetype 'cpp'. This causes ctags to be called with the option --language-force=c, while it should be called with --language-force=c++.

[ramon-oliveira]

Another question, why easytags is creating tags to the variables in the structure? There is a way to disable this?

sorry if this is a silly question, i am new in vim and their plugins.

[ghost]

Sorry for the late reply. You might want to check g:easytags_languages options, which is described in the readme file. To remove members, you might want to check --extra=-q option to ctags.

[xolox]

Sorry for all of the confusion (and buggy behavior) I seem to have caused with this. Let me first point out the original reason for this behavior of vim-easytags (the canonicalization misfeature) because I've seen no mention of this so far while it is quite relevant:

• I write (or used to write) a lot of C code but I've never written a line of C++
• Exuberant Ctags gives tags in *.h (header) files the extension field language:C++ (see below)
• vim-easytags uses file type specific tags (the language: extension field) to speed up processing of large tags files

The result of the three points above was that I missed the tags defined in my C *.h files so I implemented file type canonicalization. The current implementation is clearly suboptimal :-) but I'm not yet sure how to improve it. Given that C++ is a (proper?) super set of C maybe the canonicalization of C should result in C++ instead of the other way around? But then what to do with Objective C and others?

---

Here's an example of Exuberant Ctags' behavior I'm referring to above (just tested it to verify):

$ ctags -f - --fields=+l /usr/include/errno.h
_ERRNO_H    /usr/include/errno.h    28;"    d   language:C++
__error_t_defined   /usr/include/errno.h    70;"    d   language:C++
__need_Emath    /usr/include/errno.h    37;"    d   language:C++
__need_error_t  /usr/include/errno.h    72;"    d   language:C++
error_t /usr/include/errno.h    /^typedef int error_t;$/;"  t   language:C++

[xolox]

I just realized that Vim interprets *.h files as C++ (filetype=cpp) as well. So Vim and Exuberant Ctags are consistent with each other. Maybe that means file type canonicalization is a bogus feature which can be removed?

[ghost]

From the viewpoint of vim's syntax highlighter and ctags, I think it is fair to treat C as a subset of C++. But I am not familiar with Obj-C and Obj-C++. Thank you for your help.

[harnold]

I think the approach of Easytags canonizing the file type is wrong. File type detection is Vim's business, and Vim can already detect file types based on more than the file name ending. If that doesn't work, it's easy to fix. For example, for *.h files, I decide between C and C++ based on a search for some C++ specific keywords, which works great. Therefore, in my opinion, Easytags should simply map each supported Vim file type to the corresponding ctags file type.

[xolox]

Hi all! I just published vim-easytags 3.8 with the intention of fixing this issue... Please try it out and let me know whether it resolves the issue reported here.

[harnold]

Version 3.8 only partially works for me: It generates C++ tags for C and C++ files now, but the tags are no longer highlighted.

[xolox]

@harnold: You're right, it's only a partial fix, thanks for pointing that out. I have a proper test case now so will update this issue when I've pushed a fix.

[xolox]

I just released vim-easytags 3.8.2. Does this work better?

[harnold]

@xolox: Unfortunately not, tags are not colored (neither C nor C++). Does it work for you?

[xolox]

@harnold:

Yes this time I properly tested it :-). I get highlighted C as well as C++ tags, with and without syntax keyword highlighting and with and without Python accelerated highlighting. Maybe another bug is preventing highlighting from working for you? Below is a one line Vim command to print your vim-easytags configuration:

echo join(sort(map(items(filter(copy(g:), 'v:key =~ "^easytags"')), 'string(v:val)')), "\n")

If you're running gVim you may prefer this variant:

call confirm(join(sort(map(items(filter(copy(g:), 'v:key =~ "^easytags"')), 'string(v:val)')), "\n"))

Here is the output with my configuration:

['easytags_always_enabled', 1]
['easytags_async', 1]
['easytags_by_filetype', '/home/peter/.local/vim/tags/filetypes']
['easytags_cmd', '/usr/bin/ctags-exuberant']
['easytags_ctags_version', '5.9']
['easytags_events', ['BufWritePost', 'CursorHold', 'CursorHoldI', 'BufReadPost', 'FocusGained', 'ShellCmdPost', 'ShellFilterPost']]
['easytags_file', '~/.vimtags']
['easytags_ignored_filetypes', '^tex$']
['easytags_on_cursorhold', 1]
['easytags_python_enabled', 1]
['easytags_python_script', '/home/peter/Dropbox/Projects/Vim/easytags/plugin/../misc/easytags/highlight.py']
['easytags_resolve_links', 1]
['easytags_syntax_keyword', 'auto']

[ghost]

Mine works okay. Thanks a lot.

[xolox]

@nocte107: Thanks for the follow up! I'm glad to hear that this issue seems to be resolved for at least some users.

If anyone else feels like chiming in, I'd love to hear whether the issue is resolved for others. If/when it's not (as suggested by @harnold) then we can start to narrow down what the difference is between the users who say the issue is resolved vs. those who say the issue is not resolved; e.g. we might be conflating unrelated issues!

Also @harnold if you could reply to my previous message here that would be great.

[harnold]

@xolox: Sorry, I missed your last comment. Tag coloring now works on my system; must have been some caching issue. I guess you can consider this bug solved.

[xolox]

@harnold: Thanks for the follow up, great to hear it works now!

Thanks for everyone's input on this issue & happy Vimming!

[davidkennedydev]

Ok, at principle i believe that's my problem, but searching vim with :tag NamespaceX::ClassNameX::methodName this points correctly, but if i just puts the cursos above a methodName call and use <c-]> this points incorrectly. This a problem on vim-easytags plugins or a problem with the own <c-]> map to go to tag on VIM?