Configuring ctags for Python and Vim

Exuberant ctags is a cool, language-agnostic tool for creating tag files for your source code. Nice editors such as Vim, could use these tag files to implement the much needed 'jump to definition' feature.

Ctags is awesome, it supports Python, and is supported by Vim. It seems that the world is perfect and there's no reason to write a post about configuring it. Well... almost.

ctags has a little downside when using Python: it recognizes import lines as a definition, at least as of ctags v5.8. No need to explain why it's annoying in most cases. After 2 years of suffering, I've found it's possible to overcome this simply by adding theÂ --python-kinds=-i option to the command line, or better: to ~/.ctags.

And just to make it complete, a quick cookbook style for setting everything up and using:

Install ctags
e.g. aptitude install exuberant-ctags
Configure ctags.
Add to ~/.ctags the following, one option per line:
1. --python-kinds=-i
2. optional: --exclude=<partial names of bad files/directories>. e.g. --exclude=*/build/* to exclude all files inside 'build/' directories
Add a cron to rebuild tags, for instance:
1 * * * * ctags -R -o ~/mytags ~/src
Configure vim:
add to ~/.vimrc: :set tags=~/mytags
Use Vim:
1. vim -t <tag name> to open vim straight on the tag
2. Ctrl+] to jump to tag when over a word
3. Ctrl+T to pop back
4. :tselect or :stselect to open
5. :tnext, :tprev to go to next/prev tag finding
6. :help tags for more 🙂

14 thoughts on “Configuring ctags for Python and Vim”

Sagiv February 8, 2011 at 11:36

But the _real_ fun begins when you use cscope (http://cscope.sourceforge.net/) (support is by default built-into vim) and pycscope (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pycscope/0.3) to generate the tags.

Oren Held Post authorFebruary 8, 2011 at 12:29

Sounds awesome, gotta try it 🙂
10x

hash1baby April 11, 2011 at 06:24

thanks for the --python-kinds=-i tip. I've been suffering silently 2 years too.

Alon Horev July 13, 2011 at 09:09

You should totally try pyflakes and rope:
pyflakes: is like lint, highlights various errors identified in static analysis (syntax errors, undefined symbols). i use it in emacs but hears it works on vim as well.
rope: dynamic analysis for python! find-occurences, find-implementation, show-documentation, refactoring methods and much more! this too has a plugin for vim but i've never tried it.

__B__ August 8, 2011 at 23:02

Thanks. I've been suffering for 2 years also. A single parameter instead of more suffering. This is absolutely great.

bluedome October 31, 2011 at 21:48

In step 2, there are double dashes before the options.

Still, on OSX lion I get an error message with exuberant ctags 5.8; it says
ctags: Unknown option: -?

Wonil December 6, 2012 at 14:14

Should use '--python-kinds=-i' for Mac OS X

Oren Held Post authorDecember 17, 2012 at 01:32

Wonil: for Linux too. It was a problem with wordpress, which turns a single hyphen into an em-dash or something. Fixed, thanks.

Quiark May 28, 2013 at 04:35

I think you don't need to set output file to mytags. Just use the default and then you don't need to set anything in Vim either, it looks for tags automatically.

Oren Held Post authorJune 30, 2013 at 23:32

Quiark: interesting, simplifies things, thanks! 🙂

Charlie February 11, 2019 at 01:33

Wouldn't it be better to set up a watch or a demon. Contently having ctags running in a cron job seen like it will eat a lot of cpu.

Siva Kumar June 18, 2019 at 17:27

Thank you! I too had been silently suffering for many years. I'd been using cscope to navigate through the files but couldn't get ctags to work. Now, I can. Thanks once again!