Bug#859426: vim: Vim 8 cannot handle 'etags' format any more

[Alexander Burger]

Package: vim
Version: 2:8.0.0197-3
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

   * What led up to the situation?
   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?
   * What was the outcome of this action?
   * What outcome did you expect instead?

*** End of the template - remove these template lines ***

When the file "tags" (or also "TAGS") was created with the 'etags' command, e.g.

   $ etags file.c

then this (or some other) file edited with

   $ vim file.c

and pressed Ctrl-] pressed on an identifier, it gives the error message:

   E492: Not an editor command: void foo(int n) {^?foo

This started with Stretch. In all older Debian version it worked well.
I observe this behavior also on other stretch-only systems.

Many thanks!
- A. Burger


-- Package-specific info:

--- real paths of main Vim binaries ---
/usr/bin/vi is /usr/bin/vim.basic
/usr/bin/vim is /usr/bin/vim.basic

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.7
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (700, 'stable'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (400, 'testing'), (300, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages vim depends on:
ii  libacl1      2.2.52-2
ii  libc6        2.19-18+deb8u7
ii  libgpm2      1.20.4-6.1+b2
ii  libselinux1  2.3-2
ii  libtinfo5    6.0+20161126-1
ii  vim-common   2:8.0.0197-3
ii  vim-runtime  2:8.0.0197-3

vim recommends no packages.

Versions of packages vim suggests:
ii  exuberant-ctags [ctags]  1:5.9~svn20110310-8
pn  vim-doc                  <none>
pn  vim-scripts              <none>

-- no debconf information