Do you want to have a shortcut that takes you from a method call to it’s definition, wherever that may be in your code? How about another shortcut to jump back to your previous position. Here is how to do it in Sublime Text 2

This magic is made possible by CTags and the awesome Sublime Text 2 Plug-In.

Ctags generates an index (or tag) file of language objects found in source files that allows these items to be quickly and easily located by a text editor or other utility. A tag signifies a language object for which an index entry is available (or, alternatively, the index entry created for that object).

Installation

Installation is easy, you need to install ctags first (platform dependent, but easy if you follow the README) and to install the plugin, you can use Package Control.

Customization

The current project I am working on is pretty big, but I am not interested in having ctags for all the project, since I am just working on the ruby stuff and none of the JavaScript. Thus, to make ctags more accurate, I customized the way the tags are generated to only include ruby files and to include the gems in use in that project.

First, I created a shell script in my path called ctags_for_ruby

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

# Generate project ctags
system("find . -name '*.rb' | ctags -f .tags -L -")

# Generate gem ctags
if File.exist?('./Gemfile')
  require 'bundler'
  paths = Bundler.load.specs.map(&:full_gem_path).join(' ')
  system("ctags -R -f .gemtags #{paths}")
end

Now, we configure the plugin to use this script to create the tags:

json Preferences -> Package Setttings -> CTags -> Settings - User { "command" : "ctags_for_ruby" }

By default, the plug-in will look for tags, .tags and .gemtags in the project directory.

Enjoy

That is it, use the plug-ins keyboard shortcuts (or override) and navigate to method definitions (ctrl+t ctrl+t) and back (ctrl+t ctrl+b) or rebuild (ctrl+t ctrl+r) as needed.

After just a few days of using it, I found it indispensable.