Installing and using universal-ctags instead of exuberant-ctags

How could I switch from exuberant-ctags to universal-ctags. I am using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and

ctags --version reports

Exuberant Ctags 5.9~svn20110310, Copyright (C) 1996-2009 Darren Hiebert

2 Answers

It is simple, as in the universal-ctags docs:

git clone
cd ctags
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

I'm on Ubuntu, and for me I can use either:

sudo apt install universal-ctags

or

sudo snap install universal-ctags

The snap has the advantage that it will work on any Ubuntu release (or on any other distribution with snapd installed.)

I manage this snap package, and currently (June 2022) make releases from the universal-ctags source every two weeks. So the snap is a lot more up-to-date (May 2022) than the apt (currently September 2021, on Jammy).

The snap has some disadvantages imposed by the snap security model (snaps run in a container, and are only granted access to specific aspects of the underlying host), so for example the snap of universal-tags cannot run on source code that is outside of your home folder. These limitations are described in detail on the snap listing page, but shouldn't be intrusive for the vast majority of normal use.

I've been happily using the snap version professionally for over two years now.