[bt-devel] Systemwide clucene indexes

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

On Thu, 16 Jul 2009, Raphaël Pinson wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have a proposal to improve the usability of BibleTime for end users.
> Currently, when you install modules, whether locally or systemwide,
> you need to build the indexes before peforming searches. In
> Debian/Ubuntu, quite a few modules are packaged and shipped as .deb,
> making them available to all users. I think it would be great if the
> indexes could be compiled and installed systemwide aswell. From what I
> see, this would require 2 things :
>    * that BibleTime search for clucene indexes in /usr/share/foo in
> addition to ~ ;
>    * that there exists a CLI tool to generate the indexes from the modules.
>
>
> With these two conditions, packagers could generate the indexes from
> the modules as they package them, and ship them together for
> systemwide installation, which would allow all users on the system to
> benefit from the indexes without building them.
>
>
> Feedback on the idea is welcome :-)
>
>
> Raphaël Pinson

Hello, it's been long time again since I last wrote to this list...

The idea is basically good. It would be easier to implement like this:

In the config dialog there would be a checkbox for "Preferred
directory for indexes" and a textbox/opener button for directory
selector. This directory would be used instead of the home directory if
the checkbox is selected. New indexes would be created there and when
using indexes the program would search them there first and then in the
home directory.

But that would complicate things for users. If the packagers want to
package indexes they should modify the software so that the program uses
the preferred directory by default. And there's a problem with file
permissions. If the Preferred directory is selected and the user doesn't
have write permissions, creating an index fails. At least the user
should be given a notice: "You don't have permission to write to x/x/x.
You can create a new index to you home directory by temporarily
disabling the preferred index directory from the configuration dialog."


  Yours,
	Eeli Kaikkonen (Mr.), Oulu, Finland
	e-mail: eekaikko at mailx.studentx.oulux.fix (with no x)