UPDATE-OTAGS(8)

✨ UPDATE-OTAGS ✨ (that's the update-otags manual, section 8, system administration commands bestie 💅)

okay so like. you know how you're deep in your OCaml era and you just wanna jump to the declaration of some library function instead of reading the whole internet?? yeah. that's this. it's the lil system-wide tag-table updater and honestly it's giving maintenance-script-that-just-works 🫶

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

update-otags

that's it. no flags. no args. she just goes. iconic behaviour honestly 👑

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so update-otags runs otags on the system-wide installed OCaml files — specifically the ones hanging out in ocamlc -where. no cap.

and why do we care?? because this makes it possible to use the tag-features of vi/vim and Emacs to jump straight to the declarations of library functions in the system-wide installed .mli files 🔥 — so you can read the documentation that is (hopefully 😭) embedded in those files. "hopefully" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting there fr fr.

for Emacs besties:</purl> use

M-x visit-tags-table <RET> /var/lib/otags/TAGS

and if you want it loaded by default (main character energy), customize tags-table-list so it contains /var/lib/otags — by using M-x customize-variable, for instance 💜

for vim besties: use

:set tags=/var/lib/otags/tags

or just add

set tags=/var/lib/otags/tags

to your .vimrc ✨

and for the cron girlies: one would typically update the system-wide tags tables with a cron-job once per week or day. set it and forget it, slay 🎀

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🦋 FILES 🦋

• /var/lib/otags/{TAGS,tags} — the system-wide tags table for Emacs and vi/vim. two files, one directory, living their best lives together 💖

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💀 BUGS 💀

not me having to say this but — see the sections KNOWN PROBLEMS and MISSING FEATURES in the otags(1) manual. it's all documented over there bestie, go look 👀

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🌈 CREDITS 🌈

update-otags appeared first in Debian Etch (see Debian bug #341939). it has been added to the contrib directory with an improved man page in otags 3.12.2. glow-up of the century honestly 💅✨

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Hendrik Tews <otags at askra.de>

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🍓 SEE ALSO 🍓

• otags(1)

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okay that's the whole page bestie, you're so welcome 💖 this lil cutie comes from the OTAGS source, dated January 2012, and it lives at UPDATE-OTAGS(8) — go update those tags and have the best day, ily, bye 🫶🌸✨