find + xargs + ctags is somehow missing tags for entire subdirectories

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(I am using RHEL7).

For Vim I create a tags file with find and ctags, running it from the directory which contains my many directories of Python packages source code.

Initially I was doing this:

find . -name \*.py | xargs ctags

but at some point I found that it was missing some entire packages.

Strangely it got fixed when I decided to skip all the test directories with:

find . -name \*.py -not \( -path \*/tests\*/\* \) | xargs ctags

I recently added some more Python packages and now this fix is skipping some directories again.

BTW, this works:

find . -name \*.py > files_for_ctags.txt; ctags -L files_for_ctags.txt

so for now it will be my solution.

But it would be nice to understand why the xargs version sometimes skips and entire directory of tags.

Any suggestions?

xargs ctags find
1 Answers

find may send too many lines to xargs via the pipe. You can confirm it with find . -name \*.py | wc -l.

In the case, xargs launches ctags process more than twice. The nth launched ctags process may overwrite the tags file generated by (n-1)th launched ctags process. This may be the trick of skipping you observed.

As I wrote in the comment, you can avoid the skipping with find . -name \*.py | ctags -L -.

There is one known issue about "-L -". If find sends a file name starting with "--" to ctags, it can be a trouble; ctags recognizes it as an option. See https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags/issues/1883 .

user_63867270
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