bug#67687: Feature request: automatic tags management

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 30/12/2023 00:17, Stefan Kangas wrote:
> Dmitry Gutov <dmitry@gutov.dev> writes:
>
> > >     . there are no updates for NEWS and the Emacs manual
> >
> > I'll certainly add something to NEWS. Not sure where and what should be
> > in the manual.
>
> How about a new node describing this feature under `(emacs) Tags
> Tables`?

Good suggestion, but that still leaves the problem of organizing the text.

Do you want, perchance, to give it a try yourself?

Optimally, it might need a significant rewrite: we wouldn't point the 
user to 'etags' right away, or the "Create Tags Table" section.

The average user taking advantage of etags-regen-mode might not even 
need to know what a "tags table" is (or only know that in very broad 
strokes), so depending on our eventual approach we might drop that node, 
or rearrange the nodes in a particular order, prefacing that one 
("Create Tags Table") as the approach for advanced users.

> > Which brings a problem: the mode is now likely unusable over Tramp in
> > any project of significant size. Something to improve later.
>
> Should this be documented somewhere?

Maybe, maybe not. The previous solution using xargs and stat (as still 
implemented on the branch -- now outdated) should work for most remote 
hosts (unixy ones). So it's likely a matter of having a user interested 
in this and giving them a short enough patch to try.