Exuberant CTAGS configuration for JavaScript and CoffeeScript

Exuberant CTAGS doesn't support CoffeeScript natively and its JavaScript support doesn't handle modern usage.

There are a bunch of sample regex's around to solve this. However I found they worked most of the time and would fail for some situations. Different sets of configurations would fail for different bits of code. How can we unify them?

I wrote some automated tests to check all the different scenarios as any agile programmer would. Now we can adjust the configuration and see that all our situations are handled.

The regex rules in ctags.conf will support these idioms:

JavaScript

Functions & Methods in various forms:

function global_function(a, b){}                -> global_function
var object_class = {                            -> object_class
  constructor: function(){}
  object_method: function(){}                   -> object_method
}
var assigned_function = function(){}            -> asigned_function
Namespace.namespaced_func = function() {}       -> namespaced_function

Variables, arrays, objects:

var myarray = [1, 2];                           -> myarray
var myobject = {a: 1};                          -> myobject
var myvar = 1;                                  -> myvar

jQuery bind event handlers. Because the extracted symbol names include both the selector and the event, they are not useful for searches, but are very handy in the TagBar window to see your file's structure.

$("#foo").bind("dollar_bind_event", function() {        -> "#foo".dollar_bind_event
jQuery('#foo').bind("jquery_bind_event", function() {   -> '#foo'.jquery_bind_event
$(bar).bind("var_bind_event", function() {              -> bar.var_bind_event

Symbols in RSpec style tests. describe() blocks use the first parameter as the symbol name. context() and it() blocks include the line's indentation for use in TagBar so you can sort of see the file's nested structure

describe("Dog", function() {                            -> Dog
  describe("bark", function() {                         -> bark
    context("while running", function() {               -> .    while running
      it("is loud", function() {                        -> .      is loud

Coffeescript

Classes and functions are identified. When there is a namespace prefix, or an @ instance prefix, the symbol name is correctly extracted.

create:  ->                                             -> create
@_setWorkspaceXml: (workspace, codeXml) ->              -> _setWorkspaceXml
class stratego.CamperAppEditor extends phaser.State     -> CamperAppEditor
local_function = (gfx, focusObj) ->                     -> local_function
window.global_function = (gfx, focusObj) ->             -> global_function
window.pkg.pkg_function = (gfx, focusObj) ->            -> pkg_function

This configuration started from here:

• https://github.com/majutsushi/tagbar/wiki#exuberant-ctags-vanilla
• https://github.com/majutsushi/tagbar/wiki#coffeescript

Incedentally, if you are interested in electronics, check out Electropoclypse