Provided by: otags_4.02.2-1_amd64 
NAME
otags - generate tags files for emacs and vi/vim from OCaml sources
SYNOPSIS
otags [STATIC-OPTION] ... [FILE] ... [DYNAMIC-OPTION] ... [FILE] ...
DESCRIPTION
otags generates TAGS files for emacs and tags files for vi/vim to give these editors the ability to
directly jump to function and value definitions (use M-. in Emacs and ^] in vi[m] with the cursor on the
symbol).
otags uses camlp4 for parsing. This is more precise than regular expression based tagging. On the
downside, otags can only tag syntactically correct files. Furthermore, otags is OCaml version specific:
Sources to be compiled with OCaml version X.Y can, in general, only be tagged with otags version X.Y.
otags can tag all files that camlp4 can parse. Internally otags keeps a current parser list that can be
modified with the options -pc (clear list), -pa (add to list), and -pr (reset to default). The default
value of the current parser list corresponds to standard OCaml syntax (containing the parsers r and o,
see STANDARD CAMLP4 PARSING EXTENSIONS below). Each source file is parsed with a camlp4 parser into
which all parsing extensions from the current parser list have been loaded. The camlp4 standard parsers
are linked into otags and if the current parser list contains only such parsers then the parsing module
is build internally. Otherwise an external camlp4 process is started.
otags tags all toplevel items in structures and signatures, including infix operators and nested modules
and signatures. It also tags instance variables and methods in classes and class-types. Filenames FILE
on the command line are parsed as interfaces if they have a .mli suffix and as implementations if they
have a .ml suffix. (See also the dynamic options -intf and -impl.)
otags can tag all files in a directory tree (if option -r is given). Files that are generated by ocamllex
or ocamlyacc or that require preprocessing with the camlp4 macro parser must, however, be tagged in the
same directory where these tools have been run. This is because the line directives that ocamllex and
ocamlyacc put into generated files are relative to the current working directory of the generating
process. For the camlp4 macro parser an INCLUDE directive may be resolved relative to the current working
directory of the camlp4 process. Therefore, if you tag such files from a different directory you will get
an error message.
When tagging whole directory trees recursively, one can specify exceptions from the current parser list
in a parser hints file or directory tree, see option -parser-hints and PARSING HINTS FILES below.
Tag files can contain absolute and/or relative file names. Otags uses the file names from the command
line for the tags file. Specifying relative file names on the command line will therefore give you a tag
file with relative file names. Obviously, a tag file with relative file names will only work if it is
located in the directory where otags was started. Otags supports writing a tags file with relative file
names in a parent directory via option -add-path, see EXAMPLES below.
STATIC OPTIONS
Static options take effect on the whole program run, regardless of their position in the command line.
-r Descend into directories. With this option, if one of the FILE arguments is a directory otags will
recursively tag all files in this whole directory tree.
-o file
Write tags to file. The default is TAGS (for emacs) and tags for vi (if the -vi option is given)
in the current directory. If file is a dash ( - ) the tags are written to standard output.
-a Append to an existing TAGS file (does only work for emacs TAGS files).
-vi Generate tags for vi and change the default output file into tags.
-I dir Add directory dir to the camlp4 search path for object files for external camlp4 parsing calls.
-add-path path
Add path at the front of every relative file name in the tags file. Useful when you want to put
the tags file in a parent directory.
-parser-hints file
Apply the parser hints in the specified file or directory tree. Whenever otags tags a file that
appears in a parser hints file, it uses the parsers specified there instead of the current parser
list, see PARSING HINTS FILES below. This option can be given multiple times to process several
hints files. If file is a directory then all files in that tree are processed as parser hints
files.
-version
Print version and exit.
-v Verbose. Print file names as they are parsed and the command lines for externally started camlp4
parsing processes (if any). If -v is the first command line argument backtraces for exceptions are
enabled and printed if an exception escapes and terminates otags (which is considered as a bug
about which I would appreciate a bug report).
-q Be quiet.
-help Print the option list.
--help Alias for -help
DYNAMIC OPTIONS
Dynamic options do only affect arguments that follow them on the command line.
-intf FILE
Parse and tag FILE as an interface.
-impl FILE
Parse and tag FILE as implementation.
-pc Clear the current parser list.
-pa parser
Add parser to the current parser list. If parser is not one of the standard parsers that are
distributed with camlp4 then the following file(s) are parsed in separate camlp4 process(es).
parser must be accepted by camlp4 -parser, that is, it must be a standard camlp4 parser name or a
bytecode file (.cmo) or library (.cma).
-pr Reset the current parser list to its default value (parse standard OCaml without extensions).
-pp Print the current parser list.
-extern
Force otags to parse all the following files with an external camlp4 process.
-intern
Switch back to (default) internal parsing.
PARSING HINTS FILES
Parsing hints files are simple text files that specify parsers for certain files. This is useful when
tagging recursively with option -r. Here is an example for some files from the OCaml distribution:
oq:
camlp4/examples/parse_files.ml
o rq g:
camlp4/examples/macros.ml
camlp4/examples/arith.ml
rf debug:
camlp4/Camlp4Bin.ml
camlp4/mkcamlp4.ml
camlp4/camlp4prof.ml
camlp4/camlp4prof.mli
The format of parser hints files is as follows. Empty lines and lines starting with ``#'' are ignored. A
parser hints file consists of an arbitrary number of sections. Each section starts with a colon
terminated line that specifies the parser to use with a space separated list of parser names (like those
accepted by option -pa). The remainder of the section contains file names, one per line. Leading and
trailing white space is ignored.
EXAMPLES
Tag some files in the original and some in the revised syntax:
otags original.ml -pc -pa r revised.ml -pr original.ml
The -pc is necessary because, for camlp4, the original OCaml syntax is an extension of the revised
syntax. Therefore, the default current parser list contains the parser r already and adding r would not
change the current parser list.
Tag files with quotations (original host syntax and revised quotation syntax):
otags -pa rq qotation.ml
Tag files that use the sexplib extension:
otags -I /usr/lib/ocaml/type-conv -I /usr/lib/ocaml/sexplib -pa pa_type_conv.cmo -pa
pa_sexp_conv.cmo use_sexp.ml
The -I options specify the directories where pa_type_conv.cmo and pa_sexp_conv.cmo are located on the
system.
Tag files in a subdirectory keeping the tags file in parent directory
cd subdir; otags -o ../TAGS -add-path subdir ...
This complicated procedure is only necessary if there are files inside subdir with line directives
containing relative file names (for instance, generated by ocamllex or ocamlyacc running inside subdir)
and when there are other sudirectories whose material should be added to ../TAGS. If there are no files
with relative line directives one can simply use "otags -r" in the directory containing subdir. If there
are no other subdirectories one could put the tags file into subdir without using -o or -add-path.
STANDARD CAMLP4 PARSING EXTENSIONS
There is currently no documentation on the names and aliases that refer to standard camlp4 parsing
modules. Also the dependencies among those modules is mostly undocumented. The only source for
information is the file camlp4/Camlp4Bin.ml in the OCaml distribution.
The following list describes the identifiers that camlp4 -parser treats specifically. This is therefore
the list of standard camlp4 parsers. For these identifiers case is not significant (they are piped
through String.lowercase before matching). The dependencies listed here are treated auto-magically by
camlp4 and otags.
r, ocamlr, ocamlrevised, pa_r.cmo, camlp4ocamlrevisedparser.cmo
Revised syntax without stream parsers.
rr, reloaded, ocamlreloaded, camlp4ocamlreloadedparser.cmo
Variant of the revised syntax (usage unknown).
o, ocaml, pa_o.cmo, camlp4ocamlparser.cmo
Original syntax without stream parsers. Depends on parser r.
rp, rparser, pa_rp.cmo, camlp4ocamlrevisedparserparser.cmo
Revised syntax with stream parsers. (See bug #5134 for OCaml 3.12.0 and earlier.) Depends on
parser r.
op, parser, pa_op.cmo, camlp4ocamlparserparser.cmo
Original syntax with stream parsers. Depends on parser r, o, rp
g, grammar, pa_extend.cmo, pa_extend_m.cmo, camlp4grammarparser.cmo
Grammar extensions.
m, macro, pa_macro.cmo, camlp4macroparser.cmo
Macros and conditionals.
q, camlp4quotationexpander.cmo
Reflective Quotations. This parsing extension takes the current host syntax and adds quotation
expanders using that current syntax such that the resulting grammar is reflective: Changing the
host syntax afterwards does also affect the quotation syntax. Depends on module
Camlp4QuotationCommon (common quotation infrastructure).
rq, q_mlast.cmo, camlp4ocamlrevisedquotationexpander.cmo
Revised Quotations. Adds quotations in the revised syntax. Host and quotation parsing remain
independent. Depends on module Camlp4QuotationCommon (common quotation infrastructure).
oq, camlp4ocamloriginalquotationexpander.cmo
Original OCaml with original quotations. Loads original OCaml (without stream parsers) as host
syntax and as quotation syntax. Host and quotation syntax are independent (not reflective).
Depends on parser ocamlr, ocaml and module Camlp4QuotationCommon
rf Full revised. Sets up revised syntax with stream parsers, grammar extensions, list comprehensions
and macros and adds reflective quotations. Depends on parsers/modules r, rp,
Camlp4QuotationCommon, q, g, comp, m.
of Original full. Sets up original OCaml with stream parsers, grammar extensions, list comprehensions
and macros and adds reflective quotations (i.e., quotations are in original syntax). (See bug
#5129 for OCaml 3.12.0 and earlier.) Depends on parsers/modules r, o, rp, op,
Camlp4QuotationCommon, q, g, comp and m.
comp, camlp4listcomprehension.cmo
List comprehensions.
debug, camlp4debugparser, camlp4debugparser.cmo
Debugging statements debug and camlp4_debug. The expansion of those statements depends on the
value of the environment variable STATIC_CAMLP4_DEBUG such that also the produced tag entries
might depend on this variable.
DIAGNOSTICS
Parse errors are reported with normal camlp4 error messages. No tags are generated for files that produce
errors. Tagging continues with the next file, in this case.
The error "Original source not available" is reported if the file to which a line directive refers cannot
be found. This may happen if otags is started in a different directory than the program that generated
the faulting file.
Otags exists with "Parser list empty for ..." when attempting to process a file with an empty current
parser list. This happens when no -pa option follows -pc.
Otags prints "Toplevel directive found in ... Skip file." for files containing toplevel directives. The
problem is that the location information in the abstract syntax tree is incorrect after toplevel
directives, see bug #5127.
Escaping exceptions and assertions that terminate otags are considered as bugs. If they occur, please use
option -v as first command line switch to obtain an exception backtrace and submit this with all relevant
information as bug report.
EXIT STATUS
0 everything went OK
1 a parse error or some other error occurred and otags skipped the affected file
2 a fatal error caused otags to abort
3 some bug caused a crash, from which otags could only marginally recover
KNOWN PROBLEMS
The camlp4 and OCaml parsers differed always in subtle ways. Making camlp4 independent of OCaml
aggravated the problem. camlp4 version 4.02.3 only accepts very few attributes. It accepts no block or
stand alone attributes (those with [@@ and [@@@) or extension nodes ( [% or [%%). Otags therefore fails
on many fails from the OCaml standard library.
MISSING FEATURES
Appending to vi tags files requires to reread the existing tags file, because vi tags files are sorted.
Incompatible camlp4 syntax trees (from external camlp4 parsing processes) are detected with magic
numbers. However, an incompatible camlp4 will likely die when it tries to load the otags specific camlp4
printer. Such fatal dynamic loader errors are treated like parsing errors, because camlp4 produces the
same exit status in both cases.
CREDITS
Cuihtlauac Alvarado and Jean-Francois Monin were the first to exploit camlp4 for tagging OCaml files.
This version is a complete rewrite, based on the new camlp4 from OCaml version 3.10 and onwards.
AUTHOR
Hendrik Tews <otags at askra.de>
SEE ALSO
etags(1), ctags(1)
OTAGS August 2010 OTAGS(1)