I'll be learning Java in a college class next semester, and I'm going to try to use Vim instead of one of the big IDEs, just because it makes it so much easier to move around.

I'm going through some steps found online to set things up to make working with Java easier, and I have a quick question about ctags.

A site suggested recursively generating tags for your source and the Java source (in the installation src directory) with "ctags -f ~/.tags -R ~/src $JAVA_HOME/src". Two problems with this... first, is there a way to automatically add tags as you code aside from making a cron job to run every so often? Second, ctags seems to regenerate the entire list every time it's run, so is there a way to make it ignore a directory that it already has complete tags for (i.e. keep generating for ~/src but only do the Java tags once)?

Thanks.

Moved to Programming at posters request.

the man page should tell you all you need to know,
or Google

All I've been able to find while reading through the entire man page (and the reason why I'm posting here) is the exclusion of directories, which would eliminate it altogether instead of just not updating it more than once. My first question still stands as well: what is the common/recommended way to update tags as you code?

1. Of course, you can run it whenever you like. I usually set up a vi keymap.

2. Well if you don't regenerate, then the java tags won't exist; as ctags creates a new file each time.

I would suggest going at it from another angle. First can VI use multiple tag files?
If so no probs. Do a static tag file and a dynamic.
If not maybe you can do as above and cat the two together into a new tag file.

The multiple tag files idea works perfectly, and I'll look into the mapping. Thanks!

some versions of gvim have a menu "tools->build tags"
It seems to call ctags. Maybe you can override the command
or if not make an alias or shell wrapper to override.

In the vim help it mentions other tag progs.
exuberant C tags and jtags, both for java.

map is quite easy. I usually map ctrl-P to do stuff.

something like
:map ^P ! ctags blah blah<return>

you need to do a ctrl-V to insert literal keys like a control-P or return

Works fine, thanks again.