Release notes for Recoll 1.23.x

Caveats

Installing over an older version: 1.19-21

Some of the input handlers were converted from shell scripts to Python programs, and some helper dependancies changed. For example, you will need to install python-libxml2 and python-libxslt1 in most cases (for replacing xsltproc).

1.20-23 indexes are fully compatible. Installing 1.23 over an 1.19 index is possible, but there have been small changes in the way compound words (e.g. email addresses) are indexed, so it will be best to reset the index. Still, in a pinch, 1.23 search can mostly use an 1.19 index.

Always reset the index if you do not know by which version it was created (e.g.: you're not sure it's at least 1.18). The best method is to quit all Recoll programs and delete the index directory ( rm -rf ~/.recoll/xapiandb), then start recoll or recollindex.
recollindex -z will do the same in most, but not all, cases. It's better to use the rm method, which will also ensure that no debris from older releases remain (e.g.: old stemming files which are not used any more).

Case/diacritics sensitivity is off by default. It can be turned on only by editing recoll.conf ( see the manual). If you do so, you must then reset the index.

Minor releases at a glance

• 1.23.2:
  • Mostly released because of a couple of bug fixes.
  • Updated rclpdf.py handler with improved metadata capability (will be documented shortly).

• 1.23.1:
  • Fixes for the KDE KIO slave build only.

Changes in Recoll 1.23.0

Recoll 1.23 has few user-visible changes. The release was created mostly because some of the minor feature changes are critical from some niche Recoll uses (e.g.: the improved audio file properties indexing), and because the changes to the logging system were too extensive for a minor version.

• Input handler for ODF flat XML file formats.
• Configuration: some list configuration variables, namely skippedNames, noContentSuffixes, and xallexcepts, have acquired variants suffixed with + or - for adding or removing values from the default value, which is a longish list, which hence does not need to be copied for modification any more.
• New nomd5types variable for listing types of files for which we should not compute an MD5 hash (used for duplicates detection). See the manual for details. The default list excludes the audio file types.
• Unicode BOM detection for text files
• Allow using full CSS style for term highlighting, not just color.
• Internal only: the code now uses some C++11 features (e.g. std::threads, std::mutex) to replace home-grown hacks. In consequence, a C++11 compiler is now required for building. Also C++ streams are used for logging.
• execm input handlers now have an alternate method to set metadata fields, easier than HTML meta fields.