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                            Chapter 4. Installation

   Table of Contents

   4.1. Installing a prebuilt copy

   4.2. Supporting packages

   4.3. Building from source

   4.4. Configuration overview

   4.5. Extending Recoll

                        4.1. Installing a prebuilt copy

   Recoll binary packages from the Recoll web site are always linked
   statically to the Xapian libraries, and have no other dependencies. You
   will only have to check or install supporting applications for the file
   types that you want to index beyond text, HTML and mail files, and maybe
   have a look at the configuration section (but this may not be necessary
   for a quick test with default parameters).

4.1.1. Installing through a package system

   If you use a BSD-type port system or a prebuilt package (RPM or other),
   just follow the usual procedure for your system.

4.1.2. Installing a prebuilt Recoll

   The unpackaged binary versions on the Recoll web site are just compressed
   tar files of a build tree, where only the useful parts were kept
   (executables and sample configuration).

   The executable binary files are built with a static link to libxapian and
   libiconv, to make installation easier (no dependencies).

   After extracting the tar file, you can proceed with installation as if you
   had built the package from source (that is, just type make install). The
   binary trees are built for installation to /usr/local.

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                            4.2. Supporting packages

   Recoll uses external applications to index some file types. You need to
   install them for the file types that you wish to have indexed (these are
   run-time dependencies. None is needed for building Recoll):

     * Openoffice: supported natively, but needs the unzip command to be
       installed.

     * PDF: pdftotext is part of the Xpdf package.

     * Postscript: pstotext.

     * MS Word: antiword.

     * MS Excel and PowerPoint: catdoc.

     * RTF: unrtf

     * dvi: dvips

     * djvu: DjVuLibre

     * MP3: Recoll will use the id3info command from the id3lib package to
       extract tag information. Without it, only the file names will be
       indexed.

   Text, HTML, mail folders Openoffice and Scribus files are processed
   internally. Lyx is used to index Lyx files. Many filters need sed and awk.

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                           4.3. Building from source

4.3.1. Prerequisites

   At the very least, you will need to download and install the xapian core
   package (Recoll 1.9 normally uses version 1.0.2, but any 0.9 or 1.0.x
   version will work too), and the qt run-time and development packages
   (Recoll development currently uses version 3.3.5, but any 3.3 version is
   probably OK).

   You will most probably be able to find a binary package for qt for your
   system. You may have to compile Xapian but this is not difficult (if you
   are using FreeBSD, there is a port).

   You may also need libiconv. Recoll currently uses version 1.9 (this should
   not be critical). On Linux systems, the iconv interface is part of libc
   and you should not need to do anything special.

4.3.2. Building

   Recoll has been built on Linux (redhat7.3, mandriva 2005/6, Fedora Core
   3/4/5/6), FreeBSD 5/6, macosx, and Solaris 8. If you build on another
   system, and need to modify things, I would very much welcome patches.

   Depending on the qt configuration on your system, you may have to set the
   QTDIR and QMAKESPECS variables in your environment:

     * QTDIR should point to the directory above the one that holds the qt
       include files (ie: if qt.h is /usr/local/qt/include/qt.h, QTDIR should
       be /usr/local/qt).

     * QMAKESPECS should be set to the name of one of the qt mkspecs
       sub-directories (ie: linux-g++).

   On many Linux systems, QTDIR is set by the login scripts, and QMAKESPECS
   is not needed because there is a default link in mkspecs/.

   Configure options: --without-aspell will disable the code for phonetic
   matching of search terms. --with-fam or --with-inotify will enable the
   code for real time indexing. Inotify support is enabled by default on
   recent Linux systems.

   Normal procedure:

         cd recoll-xxx
         configure
         make
         (practices usual hardship-repelling invocations)
     

   There little auto-configuration. The configure script will mainly link one
   of the system-specific files in the mk directory to mk/sysconf. If your
   system is not known yet, it will tell you as much, and you may want to
   manually copy and modify one of the existing files (the new file name
   should be the output of uname -s).

4.3.3. Installation

   Either type make install or execute recollinstall prefix, in the root of
   the source tree. This will copy the commands to prefix/bin and the sample
   configuration files, scripts and other shared data to prefix/share/recoll.

   If the installation prefix given to recollinstall is different from what
   was specified when executing configure, you will have to set the
   RECOLL_DATADIR environment variable to indicate where the shared data is
   to be found.

   You can then proceed to configuration.

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                          4.4. Configuration overview

   Most of the parameters specific to the recoll GUI are set through the
   Preferences menu and stored in the standard QT place ($HOME/.qt/recollrc).
   You probably do not want to edit this by hand.

   For other options, Recoll uses text configuration files. You will have to
   edit them by hand for now (there is still some hope for a GUI
   configuration tool in the future). The most accurate documentation for the
   configuration parameters is given by comments inside the default files,
   and we will just give a general overview here.

   There are two sets of configuration files. The system-wide files are kept
   in a directory named like /usr/[local/]share/recoll/examples, they define
   default values for the system. A parallel set of files exists by default
   in the .recoll directory in your home. This directory can be changed with
   the RECOLL_CONFDIR environment variable or the -c option parameter to
   recoll and recollindex.

   If the .recoll directory does not exist when recoll or recollindex are
   started, it will be created with a set of empty configuration files.
   recoll will give you a chance to edit the configuration file before
   starting indexing. recollindex will proceed immediately. To avoid
   mistakes, the automatic directory creation will only occur for the default
   location, not if -c or RECOLL_CONFDIR were used (in the latter cases, you
   will have to create the directory).

   All configuration files share the same format. For example, a short
   extract of the main configuration file might look as follows:

         # Space-separated list of directories to index.
         topdirs =  ~/docs /usr/share/doc

         [~/somedirectory-with-utf8-txt-files]
         defaultcharset = utf-8
       

   There are three kinds of lines:

     * Comment (starts with #) or empty.

     * Parameter affectation (name = value).

     * Section definition ([somedirname]).

   Section definitions allow redefining some parameters for a directory
   sub-tree. They stay in effect until another section definition, or the end
   of file, is encountered. Some of the parameters used for indexing are
   looked up hierarchically from the current directory location upwards. Not
   all parameters can be meaningfully redefined, this is specified for each
   in the next section.

   When found at the beginning of a file path, the tilde character (~) is
   expanded to the name of the user's home directory, as a shell would do.

   White space is used for separation inside lists. List elements with
   embedded spaces can be quoted using double-quotes.

4.4.1. Main configuration file

   recoll.conf is the main configuration file. It defines things like what to
   index (top directories and things to ignore), and the default character
   set to use for document types which do not specify it internally.

   The default configuration will index your home directory. If this is not
   appropriate, start recoll to create a blank configuration, click Cancel,
   and edit the configuration file before restarting the command. This will
   start the initial indexing, which may take some time.

   Paramers:

   topdirs

           Specifies the list of directories or files to index (recursively
           for directories). The indexer will not follow symbolic links
           inside the indexed trees. If an entry in the topdirs list is a
           symbolic link, indexing will not start and will generate an error.

   dbdir

           The name of the Xapian data directory. It will be created if
           needed when the index is initialized. If this is not an absolute
           path, it will be interpreted relative to the configuration
           directory. The value can have embedded spaces but starting or
           trailing spaces will be trimmed. You cannot use quotes here.

   skippedNames

           A space-separated list of patterns for names of files or
           directories that should be completely ignored. The list defined in
           the default file is:

 skippedNames = #* bin CVS  Cache cache* caughtspam  tmp .thumbnails .svn \
          *~ recollrc

           The list can be redefined for sub-directories, but is only
           actually changed for the top level ones in topdirs.

           The top-level directories are not affected by this list (that is,
           a directory in topdirs might match and would still be indexed).

           The list in the default configuration does not exclude hidden
           directories (names beginning with a dot), which means that it may
           index quite a few things that you do not want. On the other hand,
           mail user agents like thunderbird usually store messages in hidden
           directories, and you probably want this indexed. One possible
           solution is to have .* in skippedNames, and add things like
           ~/.thunderbird or ~/.evolution in topdirs.

   skippedPaths and daemSkippedPaths

           A space-separated list of patterns for paths of files or
           directories that should be skipped. There is no default in the
           sample configuration file, but the code always adds the
           configuration and database directories in there.

           skippedPaths is used both by batch and real time indexing.
           daemSkippedPaths can be used to specify things that should be
           indexed at startup, but not monitored.

           Example of use for skipping text files only in a specific
           directory:

 skippedPaths = ~/somedir/*.txt
             

   loglevel,daemloglevel

           Verbosity level for recoll and recollindex. A value of 4 lists
           quite a lot of debug/information messages. 2 only lists errors.
           The daemversion is specific to the indexing monitor daemon.

   logfilename, daemlogfilename

           Where the messages should go. 'stderr' can be used as a special
           value, and is the default. The daemversion is specific to the
           indexing monitor daemon.

   indexstemminglanguages

           A list of languages for which the stem expansion databases will be
           built. See recollindex(1) or use the recollindex -l command for
           possible values. You can add a stem expansion database for a
           different language by using recollindex -s, but it will be deleted
           during the next indexing. Only languages listed in the
           configuration file are permanent.

   defaultcharset

           The name of the character set used for files that do not contain a
           character set definition (ie: plain text files). This can be
           redefined for any sub-directory. If it is not set at all, the
           character set used is the one defined by the nls environment
           (LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG), or iso8859-1 if nothing is set.

   maxfsoccuppc

           Maximum file system occupation before we stop indexing. The value
           is a percentage, corresponding to what the "Capacity" df output
           column shows. The default value is 0, meaning no checking.

   idxflushmb

           Threshold (megabytes of new text data) where we flush from memory
           to disk index. Setting this can help control memory usage. A value
           of 0 means no explicit flushing, letting Xapian use its own
           default, which is flushing every 10000 documents (memory usage
           depends on average document size). The default value is 10.

   filtersdir

           A directory to search for the external filter scripts used to
           index some types of files. The value should not be changed, except
           if you want to modify one of the default scripts. The value can be
           redefined for any sub-directory.

   iconsdir

           The name of the directory where recoll result list icons are
           stored. You can change this if you want different images.

   guesscharset

           Decide if we try to guess the character set of files if no
           internal value is available (ie: for plain text files). This does
           not work well in general, and should probably not be used.

   usesystemfilecommand

           Decide if we use the file -i system command as a final step for
           determining the mime type for a file (the main procedure uses
           suffix associations as defined in the mimemap file). This can be
           useful for files with suffix-less names, but it will also cause
           the indexing of many bogus "text" files.

   indexallfilenames

           Recoll indexes file names in a special section of the database to
           allow specific file names searches using wild cards. This
           parameter decides if file name indexing is performed only for
           files with mime types that would qualify them for full text
           indexing, or for all files inside the selected subtrees,
           independently of mime type.

   idxabsmlen

           Recoll stores an abstract for each indexed file inside the
           database. This is so that they can be displayed inside the result
           lists without decoding the original file. This parameter defines
           the size of the stored abstract (which can come from an actual
           section or just be the beginning of the text). The default value
           is 250.

   aspellLanguage

           Language definitions to use when creating the aspell dictionary.
           The value must match a set of aspell language definition files.
           You can type "aspell config" to see where these are installed
           (look for data-dir). The default if the variable is not set is to
           use your desktop national language environment to guess the value.

   noaspell

           If this is set, the aspell dictionary generation is turned off.
           Useful for cases where you don't need the functionality or when it
           is unusable because aspell crashes during dictionary generation.

4.4.2. The mimemap file

   mimemap specifies the file name extension to mime type mappings.

   For file names without an extension, or with an unknown one, the system's
   file -i command will be executed to determine the mime type (this can be
   switched off inside the main configuration file).

   The mappings can be specified on a per-subtree basis, which may be useful
   in some cases. Example: gaim logs have a .txt extension but should be
   handled specially, which is possible because they are usually all located
   in one place.

   mimemap also has a recoll_noindex variable which is a list of suffixes.
   Matching files will be skipped (which avoids unnecessary decompressions or
   file executions). This is partially redundant with skippedNames in the
   main configuration file, with two differences: it will not affect
   directories, and it cannot be made dependant on the file-system location
   (it is a configuration-wide parameter). You could accomplish with
   skippedNames anything that recoll_noindex does. The latter is used mostly
   for things known to be unindexable by a given Recoll version. Having it
   there avoids cluttering the more user-oriented and locally customized
   skippedNames.

4.4.3. The mimeconf file

   mimeconf specifies how the different mime types are handled for indexing,
   and which icons are displayed in the recoll result lists.

   Changing the parameters in the [index] section is probably not a good idea
   except if you are a Recoll developer.

   The [icons] section allows you to change the icons which are displayed by
   recoll in the result lists (the values are the basenames of the png images
   inside the iconsdir directory (specified in recoll.conf).

4.4.4. The mimeview file

   mimeview specifies which programs are started when you click on an Edit
   link in a result list. Ie: HTML is normally displayed using firefox, but
   you may prefer Konqueror, your openoffice.org program might be named
   oofice instead of openoffice etc.

   Changes to this file can be done by direct editing, or through the recoll
   user preferences dialog.

   As for the other configuration files, the normal usage is to have a
   mimeview inside your own configuration directory, with just the
   non-default entries, which will override those from the central
   configuration file.

   Please note that these entries must be placed under a [view] section.

   If Use desktop preferences to choose document editor is checked in the
   user preferences, all mimeview entries will be ignored except the one
   labelled application/x-all (which is set to use xdg-open by default).

4.4.5. Examples of configuration adjustments

  4.4.5.1. Adding an external viewer for an non-indexed type

   Imagine that you have some kind of file which does not have indexable
   content, but for which you would like to have a functional Edit link in
   the result list (when found by file name). The file names end in .blob and
   can be displayed by application blobviewer.

   You need two entries in the configuration files for this to work:

     * In $RECOLL_CONFDIR/mimemap (typically ~/.recoll/mimemap), add the
       following line:

              application/x-blobapp = .blob
          

       Note that the mime type is made up here, and you could call it
       diesel/oil just the same.

     * In $RECOLL_CONFDIR/mimeview under the [view] section:

                  application/x-blobapp = blobviewer %f
             

       We are supposing that blobviewer wants a file name parameter here, you
       would use %u if it liked URLs better.

   If you just wanted to change the application used by Recoll to display a
   mime type which it already knows, you would just need to edit mimeview.
   The entries you add in your personal file override those in the central
   configuration, which you do not need to alter

  4.4.5.2. Adding indexing support for a new file type

   Let us now imagine that the above .blob files actually contain indexable
   text and that you know how to extract it with a command line program.
   Getting Recoll to index the files is easy. You need to perform the above
   alteration, and also to add data to the mimeconf file (typically in
   ~/.recoll/mimeconf):

     * Under the [index] section, add the following line (more about the
       rclblob indexing script later):

                  application/x-blobapp = exec rclblob
             

     * Under the [icons] section, you should choose an icon to be displayed
       for the files inside the result lists. Icons are normally 64x64 pixels
       PNG files which live in /usr/[local/]share/recoll/images.

     * Under the [categories] section, you should add the mime type where it
       makes sense (you can also create a category). Categories may be used
       for filtering in advanced search.

   The rclblob filter should be an executable program or script which exists
   inside /usr/[local/]share/recoll/filters. It will be given a file name as
   argument and should output the text contents in html format on the
   standard output.

   You can find more details about writing a Recoll filter in the section
   about writing filters

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