CTags

This Sublime Text package provides support for working with tags generated by Exuberant CTags or Universal CTags.

ctags command is searched for on the system PATH. It works by doing a binary search of a memory-mapped tags file, so it will work efficiently with very large (50MB+) tags files if needed.

Installation

Package Control

The easiest way to install is using Package Control. It's listed as CTags.

1. Open Command Palette using menu item Tools → Command Palette...
2. Choose Package Control: Install Package
3. Find CTags and hit Enter

Manual Download

1. Download the .zip
2. Unzip and rename folder to CTags
3. Copy folder into Packages directory, which can be found using the menu item Preferences → Browse Packages...

Using Git

Go to your Sublime Text Packages directory and clone the repository using the command below::

git clone https://github.com/SublimeText/CTags

Additional Setup Steps

Linux

To install ctags use your package manager.

• For Debian-based systems (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.)::

  sudo apt-get install exuberant-ctags

  or

  sudo apt-get install universal-ctags

• For Red Hat-based systems (Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS)::

  sudo yum install ctags  

MacOS

The default ctags executable in OSX does not support recursive directory search (i.e. ctags -R). To get a proper copy of ctags, use one of the following options:

• Using Homebrew

  brew install ctags

• Using MacPorts

  port install ctags  

Ensure that the PATH is updated so the correct version is run:

• If which ctags doesn't point at ctags in /usr/local/bin, make sure you add /usr/local/bin to your PATH ahead of the folder which ctags reported.
• Alternatively, add the path to the new ctags executable to the settings, under command. If you have Xcode / Apple Developer Tools installed this path will likely be /usr/local/bin/ctags.

Windows

• Download Exuberant CTags binary or Universal CTags binary

• Extract ctags.exe from the downloaded zip to C:\Program Files\Sublime Text or any folder within your PATH so that Sublime Text can run it.

• Alternatively, extract to any folder and add the path to this folder to the command setting.

Usage

This uses tag files created by the ctags -R -f .tags command by default (although this can be overridden in settings).

The plugin will try to find a .tags file in the same directory as the current view, walking up directories until it finds one. If it can't find one it will offer to build one (in the directory of the current view)

If a symbol can't be found in a tags file, it will search in additional locations that are specified in the CTags.sublime-settings file (see below).

If you are a Rubyist, you can build a Ruby Gem's tags with the following script:

require 'bundler'
paths = Bundler.load.specs.map(&:full_gem_path)
system("ctags -R -f .gemtags #{paths.join(' ')}")

Settings

To open CTags.sublime-settings

1. Open Command Palette using menu item Tools → Command Palette...
2. Choose Preferences: CTags Settings and hit Enter

---

• filters will allow you to set scope specific filters against a field of the tag. In the excerpt above, imports tags like from a import b are filtered:

  '(?P<symbol>[^\t]+)\t'
  '(?P<filename>[^\t]+)\t'
  '(?P<ex_command>.*?);"\t'
  '(?P<type>[^\t\r\n]+)'
  '(?:\t(?P<fields>.*))?'
  

• extra_tag_paths is a list of extra places to look for keyed by

• (selector, platform). Note the platform is tested against sublime.platform() so any values that function returns are valid.

• extra_tag_files is a list of extra files relative to the original file

• command is the path to the version of ctags to use, for example::

  "command" : "/usr/local/bin/ctags"  

  or:

  "command" : "C:\\Users\\<username>\\Downloads\\CTags\\ctag.exe"

The rest of the options are fairly self explanatory.

Hide .tags files from side bar

By default, Sublime will include ctags files in your project, which causes them to show up in the file tree and search results. To disable this behaviour you should add a file_exclude_patterns entry to your Preferences.sublime-settings or your project file. For example:

"file_exclude_patterns": [".tags", ".tags_sorted_by_file", ".gemtags"]

Support

If there are any problems or you have a suggestion, open an issue, and we will receive a notification.

Commands Listing

Command	Key Binding	Alt Binding	Mouse Binding
rebuild_ctags	ctrl+t, ctrl+r
navigate_to_definition	ctrl+t, ctrl+t	ctrl+>	ctrl+shift+left_click
jump_back	ctrl+t, ctrl+b	ctrl+<	ctrl+shift+right_click
show_symbols	alt+s
show_symbols (all files)	alt+shift+s
show_symbols (suffix)	ctrl+alt+shift+s