Re: auto-refresh TAGS file on ChangeLog mod?

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Ted" == Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden> writes:

Ted> On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:28:59 -0500 Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden> wrote: 
TZ> I'm curious if there's a way to auto-run etags in a directory when I run
TZ> `find-tag' if the ChangeLog file (or any other file I specify) is newer
TZ> than the TAGS file.  In Makefile format, this is simply

Ted> I got no answers on gnu.emacs.help.  Maybe someone on emacs-devel will
Ted> have an idea.

I tried to solve this problem a couple times.  Actually, I tried to
solve the more general problem of auto-updating TAGS in response to
any change, not just a change to some sentinel file.

Once I wrote a big patch to put the etags command-line arguments into
the TAGS file, so you could reliably re-run etags when a file was
saved.  This never went in; in the end I think it is not the best
approach, since it doesn't handle changes occurring outside of Emacs,
and it doesn't have a way to handle new files.

My next approach was a "retags" script.  This uses inotify to watch
for file changes, then re-runs etags.  It uses a simple ".retags" file
to decide how to invoke etags -- this solves the "new file" problem.

I can send retags to you if you want.  I posted it to emacs-sources
once.  It is pretty slow, especially the first time it starts.  That
is the main reason I don't use it.

I've wanted to roll the retags idea into etags itself.  It could read
a ".retags" file, daemonize, and use inotify to watch for changes in a
directory tree.  I never found the time to do it though.

Tom