Last updated on December 10, 2016

If installing Emacs from source, an executable named ctags will be installed by default. However, many systems such as GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and macOS often already have an executable named ctags installed, such as Exuberant Ctags or Universal Ctags, which then causes conflict. To avoid this conflict, we can use the switch --program-transform-name='s/^ctags$/ctags.emacs/' when running configure to rename ctags to ctags.emacs. For example:

cd /path/to/emacs-source
mkdir build && cd build
../configure --program-transform-name='s/^ctags$/ctags.emacs/'

After that, running make install will install the Emacs ctags executable as ctags.emacs.