Could we rename the "header" tag?

Question

header idiom is used by many languages. But they don't mean the same thing , like the confusion between the web page header (visual) & the compiled languages headers.

In SO:

This tag is deprecated because it lacks discriminating power. Please use a more specific tag instead, e.g.: html-heading, email-header etc.

Here in AU, it contains around 54 tagged question. All the ones I have checked were targeting C/C++ Headers.

Could we rename the header tag to c-c++-header or c-header, some thing more specific?

I failed to write a usage guide (excerpt) for such generic tag header.

Answer 1

I think we should nuke the header tag itself. I went through a dozen or so of questions tagged header, and saw:

• keep getting kernel 3.19.0-28-generic must be compiled, Where is the header file ptp_clock_kernel.h? were about kernel headers. And kernel says:

  for questions concerning Ubuntu's kernel, including compiling and questions relating to modules

  IMO that means questions about kernel headers (which are usually needed in compiling modules) should be tagged with it.

• Why can't I use conio.h or ncurses.h?, meta/prefs.h: No such file or directory, Couldn't find libcgroup.h in Ubuntu 14.04 are about specific libraries the user needed for development
• https://askubuntu.com/q/687390/158442 is, in essence, about a missing build dependency while doing an install-from-source (aka software-installation).
• Is there a enviornmental variable for the path to header files? is about using header files, and probably should have gone to Stack Overflow.
• How to remove http headers from curl response? is about HTTP headers, but is tagged with curl, which is sufficient, IMO.
• Why Can't GrUB Find a Kernel That It Already Found? had nothing to do with headers of any kind; some command output just happened to mention kernel headers.
• https://askubuntu.com/q/649063/158442 is about packages containing headers and libraries for cross-compilation
• Concatenate multiple files without header used header in the "heading" sense.
• https://askubuntu.com/q/657038/158442 is apparently about a file named 00_header, part of grub configuration

So, in all, 4 questions in 12 fit the generic usage of "header" in the C/C++ sense, two others were covered more strongly by kernel.

I propose that if the question is about missing headers while compiling, just tag with compiling (additionally with software-installation for installing from source or kernel, kernel-modules for kernel modules).

There's also the equally pointless, but far more used, libraries tag. And since headers in the C/C++ sense are usually from libraries, perhaps we can synonymize them?