So the question goes back to, since the proposed changes are to ctags will upstream accept the changes so we don't have to keep a patch to ctags?
See the first answer here: https://github.com/geany/geany/pull/3865#issuecomment-2094775899 :-). The file `tm_ctags.c` is our source that hides the ctags "API" behind some thin layer and it is only this file that includes ctags headers so we don't pollute the rest of our sources with symbols included from ctags.