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<title>RECOLL: a personal text search system for
Unix/Linux</title>
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<meta name="Author" content="Jean-Francois Dockes">
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"recoll is a simple full-text search system for unix and linux based on the powerful and mature xapian engine">
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"full text search,fulltext,desktop search,unix,linux,solaris,open source,free">
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<p>If you wish to become involved in the development of <span
class="application">Recoll</span>, you are very much welcome,
please send me an <a
href="mailto:jean-francois.dockes@wanadoo.fr">email</a>.</p>
<h1><a name="translation">Translation</a></h1>
<p>More translations is good ! If you are a non-english speaker
(and understand english, which can probably be assumed, you
being reading this), you can take a little time to translate
the GUI messages file.</p>
<p>The newest versions of the message files follow. There
is an empty one (the xx thing), the others are partially
translated, just needing an update for the new messages.<p>
<p>Updating the files can easily be done with
the <span class="application">Qt Linguist</span>. Contact me
for more directions if needed.</p>
<ul>
<li>Blank: <a href="translations/recoll_xx.ts">recoll_xx.ts</a></li>
<li>German: <a href="translations/recoll_de.ts">recoll_de.ts</a></li>
<li>Italian: <a href="translations/recoll_it.ts">recoll_it.ts</a></li>
<li>Russian: <a href="translations/recoll_ru.ts">recoll_ru.ts</a></li>
<li>Turkish: <a href="translations/recoll_tr.ts">recoll_tr.ts</a></li>
<li>Ukrainian: <a href="translations/recoll_uk.ts">recoll_uk.ts</a></li>
</ul>
<h1><a name="development">Development</a></h1>
<p>Apart from general development for additional functionality
or bug fixes, the following tasks are waiting for you:</p>
<ul>
<li>A better GUI design (both the ergonomy and the appearance).</li>
<li>More support for the more advanced <span class=
"application">Xapian</span> concepts like relevance
feedback.</li>
<li>More filters for less common or less obviously
useful file types.</li>
<li>Integration with the <span class="application">KDE</span>
desktop.</li>
<li>Integration with some mail user agent. We need a way to
jump from a message preview to the message in thread context
inside the MUA.</li>
<li>Etc. :)</li>
</ul>
<h1><a name="problemreport">Problem reporting</a></h1>
<p>Once in a while it will happen that a Recoll program will
crash (either the "recoll" graphical interface or the
"recollindex" command line indexing command).</p>
<p>Reporting crashes is very useful. It can help others, and it
can get your own problem to be solved.</p>
<p>All reports are useful. But, in order to maximize usefulness,
a crash report should include a so-called stack trace, something
that indicates what the program was doing when it
crashed. Getting a useful stack trace is not very difficult,
but it may need a little work on your part (which
will then enable me do my part of the work).</p>
<p>If your distribution includes a separate package for Recoll
debugging symbols, it probably also has a page on its web site
explaining how to use them to get a stack trace. You should
follow these instructions. If there is no debugging package,
you should follow the instructions below. A little
familiarity with the command line will be necessary.</p>
<dl><dt>Compiling and installing a debugging version</dt>
<dd>
<ul>
<li>Obtain the recoll source for the version you are using
(<a
href="http://www.recoll.org/download.html">www.recoll.org</a>),
and extract the source tree.</li>
<li>Follow the instructions for
<a
href="http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/usermanual/index.html#RCL.INSTALL.BUILDING">
building Recoll from source</a> with the following
modifications:
<ul>
<li>Before running <tt>configure</tt>, edit
the <tt>mk/localdefs.in</tt> file and remove the <tt>-O2</tt>
option(s). </li>
<li>When running <tt>configure</tt>, specify the
standard installation location for your system as a prefix
(to avoid ending up with two installed versions, which
would almost certainly end in confusion). On Linux this
would typically be:
<br><tt>configure --prefix=/usr</tt>.
</li> <li>When installing, arrange for the installed
executables not to be stripped of debugging symbols by
specifying a value for the STRIP environment variable
(ie: <tt>echo</tt> or <tt>ls</tt>): <br><tt>sudo make
install STRIP=ls</tt>
</li>
</ul>
</ul></dd>
<dt>Getting a core dump</dt>
<dd>You will need to run the operation that caused the crash
inside a writable directory, and tell the system that you
accept core dumps. The commands need to be run in a shell
inside a terminal window. Ie:
<pre><tt>
cd
ulimit -c unlimited
recoll #(or recollindex or whatever you want to run).
</tt></pre>
Hopefully, you will succeed in getting the command to crash,
and you will get a core file.
</dd>
<dt>Using gdb to get a stack trace</dt>
<dd>
<ul>
<li>Install <tt>gdb</tt> if it is not already on the system.</li>
<li>Run <tt>gdb</tt> on the command that crashed and the
core file (depending on the system, the core file may be
named "core" or something else, like recollindex.core, or
core.pid), ie:
<br><tt>gdb /usr/bin/recollindex core</tt>
</li>
<li>Inside <tt>gdb</tt>, you need to use different
commands to get a stack trace for <tt>recoll</tt>
and <tt>recollindex</tt>. For <tt>recollindex</tt> you
can use the <tt>bt</tt> command. For <tt>recoll</tt>
use: <br><tt>thread apply all bt full</tt>
</li>
<li>Copy/paste the output to your report email :), and
quit <tt>gdb</tt> ("q").</li>
</ul>
</dd>
</dl>
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