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I have user access to a Ubuntu instance and I'd like to use CTags. The error says:
The program 'ctags' can be found in the following packages:
* exuberant-ctags
* emacs22-bin-common
* emacs21-bin-common
* elvis-tools
* emacs-snapshot-bin-common
Ask your administrator to install one of them
-bash: ctags: command not found
This and all the instructions online indicate that I need to be root. Is there a way to install it as a user?
Yes.
You will need to compile it yourself and install it in your home directory.
Download ctags source: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ctags/ctags-5.8.tar.gz
In hour shell:
$ tar zxf ctags-5.8.tar.gz
$ cd ctags-5.8
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME
$ make && make install
This will compile and install ctags in your home directory. The resulting binary will be: $HOME/bin/ctags
You will now have to modify your PATH environment variable prior to launching vim.
$ vim $HOME/.bashrc (or whichever shell you're using)
put this line in your .bashrc
export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
You will now need to resource your .bashrc (remember that .bashrc is normally only loaded from non-interactive shells. Make sure that you source .bashrc from .bash_profile)
If you need to, modify your .bash_profile and make sure it has a line like:
. $HOME/.bashrc
or
source $HOME/.bashrc
To continue without closing your shell, simply type:
$ . $HOME/.bashrc
You can now launch vim and ctags will be working.
.bash_profile already gets loaded even with just a terminal login (setup by the admin sometime ago). So adding that line made a circular reference, and locked up bash! Using scp, I got rid of .bash_profile and fixed it. Your post is helpful in general. Just wanted to point out the possible problem with pointing to bashrc from bash_profile.
You don't have to compile anything. Ctags is just a single binary program, so you can download the appropriate package, unpack it and put the binary in your path. Like that:
cd
mkdir tmp
cd tmp
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/e/exuberant-ctags/exuberant-ctags_5.5.4-1_i386.deb
dpkg -x exuberant-ctags_5.5.4-1_i386.deb .
mkdir ~/bin
cp usr/bin/ctags-exuberant ~/bin
cd ~/bin
ln -sf ctags-exuberant ctags
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
You should be able to do it yourself if you compile and install your own copy of the editor. You're not going to be able to install a system-wide package like the ones it's asking for without being root.
If you are the one who installed this Ubuntu machine, then you are the user with uid 1000 meaning that you can run commands requiring root via the sudo command, e.g.
sudo app-get install exuberant-ctags
You may need to precede this with
sudo apt-get update
to get fresh package information.
Certainly, just install it in your home directory from source.
Go to http://ctags.sourceforge.net/ and download the latest version. Expand it, open a terminal and go to the directory where you expanded it, then do this:
./configure --prefix=`( cd ~ ; pwd ~ )`
make all
make install
Now, edit your PATH with this (assuming bash, which is probably what you are using if you don't know how to do this without help):
export PATH=$PATH:`( cd ~ ; pwd ~ )`/bin
You might want to add that last line into your .bashrc or .bash_profile file as well for that matter.
You can always install it localy, say under your home directory. After that add the directory where ctags resides to yout shell PATH environment variable.
Definitely, you can compile it, and install it to a specific directory without root permission.
If you're already using Anaconda, you can install ctags with anaconda
conda install -c conda-forge ctags
