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c++linuxvimboostctags

Generating a reasonable ctags database for Boost

I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 and I ran the command:

$ ctags -R --c++-kinds=+p --fields=+iaS --extra=+q -f ~/.vim/tags/stdlibcpp /usr/include/c++/4.2.4/

to generate a ctags database for the standard C++ library and STL ( libstdc++ ) on my system for use with the OmniCppComplete vim script. This gave me a very reasonable 4MB tags file which seems to work fairly well.

However, when I ran the same command against the installed Boost headers:

$ ctags -R --c++-kinds=+p --fields=+iaS --extra=+q -f ~/.vim/tags/boost /usr/include/boost/

I ended up with a 1.4 GB tags file! I haven't tried it yet, but that seems likes it's going to be too large to be useful. Is there a way to get a slimmer, more usable tags file for my installed Boost headers?

Edit

Just as a note, libstdc++ includes TR1, which has allot of Boost libs in it. So there must be something weird going on for libstdc++ to come out with a 4 MB tags file and Boost to end up with a 1.4 GB tags file.

Just ran across this on the Boost mailing list:

Boost-users Boost and autocompletion

THE ANSWER

Thanks to Neg_EV for figuring out what the problem was, but there's a much better way of solving the problem than what he suggested:

Make sure apt-file is install, and run the following commands

( I keep my library tags in ~/.vim/tags/ ):

$ sudo apt-file update
$ apt-file list boost | grep -E -o '/usr/include/.*\.(h|hpp)' | grep -v '/usr/include/boost/typeof/' > ~/.vim/tags/boost-filelist
$ ctags --sort=foldcase --c++-kinds=+p --fields=+iaS --extra=+q -f ~/.vim/tags/boost -L ~/.vim/tags/boost-filelist

I've upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 and Boost 1.40 and that's what I tested this solution on, but it should work with any Boost version as far as I can tell.

Solution

  • I know this post is a little old, but I just ran into the same problem. I looked into it a little further and it seems it is one folder in boost that is causing the problem: typeof. I am using boost 1.37 and my tags file was 1.5G, typeof was 1.4G of that. So I just created a tags file without that directory included and the resulting size was 70M. I was even able to sort it without running out of space :) I imagine in newer versions of boost they may be other projects that are too large however the general solution I found is this...

    1. Generate a tag file for each boost folder seperately, a simple bash for loop should be able to do this.
    2. Look at which ones are too large.
    3. Either create a new single tags file excluding those large directories or keep the tag files separated simply deleting the ones that are too large.

    This is the script I used (taken from comments):

    for i in $(find -maxdepth 1 -type d | grep -v '^\.$' | sed 's/\.\///' ); do
    echo $i;
    ctags -f ~/tmp_tags/$i.tags -R --c++-kinds=+p --fields=+iaS --extra=+q --languages=c++ --sort=foldcase $i;
done

    Hope this helps.