From: Peter Zijlstra <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] scripts: Have make TAGS not include structure members Date: Wed, 27 May 2026 18:29:14 +0200
> On Wed, May 27, 2026 at 12:11:44PM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote: >> From: Steven Rostedt <[email protected]> >> >> It is really annoying when I use emacs TAGS to search for something >> like "dev_name" and have to go through 12 iterations before I find the >> function "dev_name". I really do not care about structures that include >> "dev_name" as one of its fields, and I'm sure pretty much all other >> developers do not care either. >> >> There's a "remove_structs" variable used by the scripts/tags.sh, which >> I'm guessing is suppose to remove these structures from the TAGS file, >> but it must do a poor job at it, as I'm always hitting structures when >> I want the actual declaration. >> >> Luckily, the etags program comes with an option "--no-members", which does >> exactly what I want, and I'm sure all other kernel developers want too. >> >> Create a new "no_members" variable and assign it to "--no-members" for the >> "TAGS" case and pass that to the etags program to remove structures. >> >> Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <[email protected]> >> --- >> Changes since v1: >> https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/ >> >> - Use a no_members variable instead of hard coding the --no-members into >> the etags call, as that can break some "tags" cases. (Michal Marek) > > Yeah, I often use member tags. > > The tags file have a 'kind' field, what you want is for emacs to order > on kind and prefer 'f' over 'm'. citre (https://github.com/universal-ctags/citre) utilizes the kinds field of tags file when soriting the list of definitions. citre runs on emacs. https://github.com/universal-ctags/citre/blob/master/citre-lang-c.el#L28 explains the parts of heuristics used in citre: ;; - When the symbol is after "->" or ".", tags of member kind are sorted above ;; others. ;; - When the symbol is before "(", tags of function/macro kinds are sorted ;; above others. ;; - When the cursor is on the header file in a "#include" directive, the ;; header file itself, and the references to that header file (if tagged) is ;; found as its definitions. References that uses paths can't be found. ;; Also, file names will be used for auto-completion. I use citre and ctags daily for reading kernel code. Quite comfortable. Masatake YAMATO > > The alternative is switching to use emacs-lsp, that way the editor knows > the kind of symbol you want. If you're on a function call, it should > only consider 'f' tags. Whereas if the cursor is on a member deref, it > should only consider 'm'. >
