Build instructions seem incomplete - required/useful development headers not mentioned #3269
Description
The name of the parser: not applicable
The command line you used to run ctags:
$ ctags --help
The content of input file:
- none
The tags output you are not satisfied with:
- not applicable
The tags output you expect:
- not applicable
The version of ctags:
$ ctags --version
Universal Ctags 5.9.0(80753d68), Copyright (C) 2015 Universal Ctags Team
Universal Ctags is derived from Exuberant Ctags.
Exuberant Ctags 5.8, Copyright (C) 1996-2009 Darren Hiebert
Compiled: Jan 13 2022, 23:36:02
URL: https://ctags.io/
Optional compiled features: +wildcards, +regex, +gnulib_regex, +iconv, +debug, +option-directory, +xpath, +json, +interactive, +yaml, +packcc, +optscript, +pcre2
How do you get ctags binary:
Building it locally
Summary of issue
The build instructions in the README seem incomplete.
How to reproduce
-
Install build tools (make, gcc etc) on a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 system
-
Observe that the build instructions don't mention that for best results, header files
for the libyaml, libpcre2 and libjansson files should be installed. -
Follow the instructions:
$ git clone https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags.git $ cd ctags $ ./autogen.sh $ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local $ make $ make install
-
Note that in the configure output are the following lines:
checking for LIBXML... no checking for JANSSON... no checking for LIBYAML... no checking for PCRE2... no
Expected behaviour
The install instructions should mention any libraries that are either useful or required (and ideally, say what functionality they're needed for).
Actual behaviour
The install instruction don't mention useful or required libraries.
Suggested fix
As I'm not 100% sure what functionality those libraries are used for, I can't provide a patch or pull request. But ideally, the README should mention that the libyaml, libpcre2 and libjansson header files are needed and/or useful, and why. It would be even better if it could mention how to install them on some of the most common platforms (e.g. on Ubuntu, sudo apt-get install libpcre2-dev libyaml-dev libjansson-dev
.
Thanks
Thanks for your work reviving ctags - it's much appreciated!