How To Install ctags on CentOS 8
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install ctags on CentOS 8.
What is ctags
Ctags generates an index (or tag) file of C language objects found in C source and header files. The index makes it easy for text editors or other utilities to locate the indexed items. Ctags can also generate a cross reference file which lists information about the various objects found in a set of C language files in human readable form. Exuberant Ctags improves on ctags because it can find all types of C language tags, including macro definitions, enumerated values (values inside enum{…}), function and method definitions, enum/struct/union tags, external function prototypes, typedef names and variable declarations. Exuberant Ctags is far less likely to be fooled by code containing #if preprocessor conditional constructs than ctags. Exuberant ctags supports output of Emacs style TAGS files and can be used to print out a list of selected objects found in source files. Install ctags if you are going to use your system for C programming.
We can use yum or dnf to install ctags on CentOS 8. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install ctags.
Install ctags on CentOS 8 Using dnf
Update yum database with dnf using the following command.
sudo dnf makecache --refresh
The output should look something like this:
CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream 43 kB/s | 4.3 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS 65 kB/s | 3.9 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease 43 kB/s | 3.0 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras 23 kB/s | 1.5 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack 40 kB/s | 3.0 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability 36 kB/s | 3.9 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus 24 kB/s | 1.5 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools 50 kB/s | 4.3 kB 00:00
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64 13 kB/s | 9.2 kB 00:00
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64 24 kB/s | 8.5 kB 00:00
Metadata cache created.
After updating yum database, We can install ctags using dnf by running the following command:
sudo dnf -y install ctags
Install ctags on CentOS 8 Using yum
Update yum database with yum using the following command.
sudo yum makecache --refresh
The output should look something like this:
CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream 43 kB/s | 4.3 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS 65 kB/s | 3.9 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease 43 kB/s | 3.0 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras 23 kB/s | 1.5 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack 40 kB/s | 3.0 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability 36 kB/s | 3.9 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus 24 kB/s | 1.5 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools 50 kB/s | 4.3 kB 00:00
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64 13 kB/s | 9.2 kB 00:00
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64 24 kB/s | 8.5 kB 00:00
Metadata cache created.
After updating yum database, We can install ctags using yum by running the following command:
sudo yum -y install ctags
How To Uninstall ctags on CentOS 8
To uninstall only the ctags package we can use the following command:
sudo dnf remove ctags
ctags Package Contents on CentOS 8
/usr/bin/ctags
/usr/lib/.build-id
/usr/lib/.build-id/27
/usr/lib/.build-id/27/2b5b2b80333201a9517e8ac53bd02cac3f7fa9
/usr/share/doc/ctags
/usr/share/doc/ctags/EXTENDING.html
/usr/share/doc/ctags/FAQ
/usr/share/doc/ctags/NEWS
/usr/share/doc/ctags/README
/usr/share/licenses/ctags
/usr/share/licenses/ctags/COPYING
/usr/share/man/man1/ctags.1.gz
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install ctags on CentOS 8 using yum and dnf.