gtags update fails

[3rd3]

Description

When I save .cpp files I get a message Failed: update TAGS. I've searched the web, but couldn't find anything insightful.

Reproduction steps unknown.

System Info

• OS: darwin
• Emacs: 25.1.50.1
• Spacemacs: 0.105.19
• Spacemacs branch: master (rev. a298a5a)
• Graphic display: t
• Distribution: spacemacs
• Editing style: vim
• Completion: helm
• Layers:

((ibuffer :variables ibuffer-group-buffers-by nil)
 (ranger :variables ranger-ignored-extensions
         '("mkv" "iso" "mp4" "avi" "mp4" "mkv" "zip" "rar" "exe" "ps" "webm" "png" "jpg" "jpeg" "tif" "tiff" "ics" "dmg" "swf" "gz" "m4a")
         ranger-max-preview-size 4 ranger-cleanup-eagerly t)
 (latex :variables latex-enable-auto-fill t)
 org git github version-control finance extra-langs markdown emacs-lisp haskell html javascript ipython-notebook shell-scripts java
 (haskell :variables haskell-enable-ghc-mod-support nil haskell-enable-ghci-ng-support t haskell-enable-hindent-style "gibiansky" haskell-enable-shm-support nil)
 (c-c   :variables c-c  -enable-clang-support t)
 gtags
 (python :variables python-test-runner 'pytest)
 (clojure :variables clojure-enable-fancify-symbols t)
 (shell :variables shell-default-height 20 shell-default-position 'bottom shell-enable-smart-eshell t shell-default-shell 'eshell)
 evil-commentary)

[ZhengshuaiPENG]

I can confirm this. The same when I save cpp file, it prompts failed

[shankmittal]

Same for Linux kernel project too on Ubuntu.

[deb0ch]

Same here, also when manually using helm-gtags-update-tags and ggtags-update-tags.

[delaanthonio]

@3rd3 Just to be clear, did you create gtags in your project and then you get the error, or are you getting the error without using gtags?

[3rd3]

I am sorry, this is too long ago and I don't remember anymore. Perhaps other people do.

[krixkrix]

Hmmm is this the bug I am seeing? I am testing the setup provided here:
https://tuhdo.github.io/c-ide.html.
The first time I run "helm-gtags-dwim" I am prompted to run gtags, I answer yes and select the parent directory. For GTAGSLABEL I choose default. The files GPATH, GRTAGS, GSYMS, GTAGS are created. And finding tags now works fine.
But then, when I try to update the database with "helm-gtags-update-tags" I get the message:
Failed: update tags(2)

Any help is appreciated.

[sdwolfz]

If you have emacs installed from source, you might have overwritten ctags with the one provided by emacs.

Execute: ctags --version
If you see something like this you need to reinstall ctags:

ctags (GNU Emacs 26.0.50)
Copyright (C) 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is distributed under the terms in ETAGS.README

The way I work around this is by configuring emacs with the following command:

./configure CFLAGS='-O2 -g3' --program-transform-name='s/^ctags$/ctags.emacs/'

That way emacs installs it's ctags (which should probably be named etags) with a different name.

Hope this helps.

[krixkrix]

@SDWolf: Thanks for your input. This is probably not the right place for me to seek help, so I will limit myself to simply state that:
I have not installed emacs from source, just plain Ubuntu 16.04 repo packages. Emacs 24.5.1 and ctags claims to be: GNU Emacs 24.5.

[sdwolfz]

If ctags displays GNU Emacs 24.5. then maybe it was created by the emacs package when you installed it. Try removing and installing the ctags package and check the version again.

Also, if that fails, you can install ctags from source with the following steps:

git clone https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags.git
cd ctags
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

This is sure to overwrite your current ctags binary in /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin.

[collinalexbell]

I installed ctags from source and am also getting this error

Failed: update tags(2)

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Please let us know if this issue is still valid!

[evorion]

I've just found another very contorted way to get: Failed: update TAGS(3)
I have .dir-locals.el for one of my C++ projects. Now, through a few hours of debugging, I've managed to figure out that on start of Emacs, Emacs checks for unsafe local variables and prompts you so that if you choose '!' these variables are written to ~/.emacs.d/.cache/.custom-settings

Upon this file being saved a save-hook is executed which ends up trying to update gtags for ~/.emacs.d/.cache/.custom-settings which is not going to work since GTAGS for that file has never been created. I've managed to confirm this bug by running gtags in the ~/.emacs.d/.cache folder which creates redundant gtags files but also makes the 'Failed: update TAGS(3)' message go away.

This is what Emacs was trying to run in the save-hook

global --single-update /home/vlatko/.emacs.d/.cache/.custom-settings

And the result was: Failed: update TAGS(3) <--- This error message is generated by emacs, you won't see it in the command line

So what I did was:

cd /home/vlatko/.emacs.d/.cache/
gtags

And now the 'Failed: update TAGS(3)' message is gone when I run

global --single-update /home/vlatko/.emacs.d/.cache/.custom-settings

manually and also when Emacs runs this from it's save-hook.

Edit (2023.09.19.): I've just used the same method to fix the same error when working with python. helm-gtags-update-tags is the culprit. All you need to do is figure out where you need to create the tags.