Generating tags for git repositories (mytags)

2024-11-17

Often while working on remote servers where I don’t have permissions to install language servers, I find ctags to be an effective tool to navigate code. mytags is a simple Bash script I wrote which wraps around ctags with some added functionality.

Here is the script as of 2024-11-27, you can find the latest version in my dotfiles repo.

mytags

#!/usr/bin/env bash

__is_git_repo() {
  git rev-parse &>/dev/null
}

__git_toplevel() {
  git rev-parse --show-toplevel
}

__ctags() {
  if [[ -x "$(command -v fd)" ]]
  then
    command ctags "$@" $(fd --type f --hidden --exclude '.git') # <5>
  else # <5>
    command ctags "$@" $(git ls-files --exclude-standard) # <5>
  fi
}

if ! __is_git_repo # <1>
then # <1>
  echo "mytags: not inside git repo." # <1>
  exit 1 # <1>
fi # <1>

( # <2>
  cd $(__git_toplevel) && # <3>
  __ctags "$@" # <4>
) # <2>

mytags check that we are inside a git repo, if not exit gracefully.
When inside a git repo, start a new subshell and…
cd to the top-level of the repo (i.e. where the .git folder is located), this allows us to run mytags from any subdirectory inside the git repo
execute ctags with relevant files, either using fd if it exists or git ls-files
any additional arguments are passed along to ctags