[pylucene-dev] Unable to install PyLucene-2.0 on Fedora Core 4

[Greg Kuperberg]

I yesterday tried to install PyLucene 2.0 on my laptop, which runs
Fedora Core 4, without success.  After checking that no binary was
available, I compiled the source.  Following the standard
directory structure for FC4, I had the following configuration for
the Makefile:

VERSION=2.0.0-3
LUCENE_SVN_VER=453447
LUCENE_VER=2.0.0-$(LUCENE_SVN_VER)
LUCENE_SVN=http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/lucene/java/trunk
PYTHON_VER=2.4
#DB_VER=4.3.29
#DB_VER=4.4.20

# ...

# Linux (with gcc 3.4.4 and libgcj statically linked)
PREFIX=/usr
PREFIX_PYTHON=$(PREFIX)
GCJ_HOME=/usr
GCJ_LIBDIR=$(GCJ_HOME)/lib
GCJ_STATIC=0
LIB_INSTALL=libstdc++.so.6 libgcc_s.so.1
#DB=$(PYLUCENE)/db-$(DB_VER)
#PREFIX_DB=$(PREFIX)/BerkeleyDB.$(DB_LIB_VER)
ANT=ant
PYTHON=$(PREFIX_PYTHON)/bin/python

Note that I changed libgcj from static to dynamic, because that is
because what Fedora Core 4 has.

The first problem was that neither libstdc++.so.6 nor libgcc_s.so.1 were
linked properly in /usr/lib with this configuration.  The Makefile erased
the already-present /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 and then couldn't find it.
The Makefile also could not find libgcc_s.so.1 in its old location,
/bin/libgcc_s.so.1.  Maybe both could be fixed by simply blanking the
LIB_INSTALL field in the Makefile, but this was not at all clear to me.

After that, the test suite failed.  Here is the result of make test:o

find test -name 'test_*.py' | xargs -n 1 /usr/bin/python
E
======================================================================
ERROR: testDocBoost (__main__.DocBoostTestCase)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test/test_DocBoost.py", line 68, in testDocBoost
    hitCollector())
JavaError: java.lang.NegativeArraySizeException

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 0.014s

FAILED (errors=1)
..
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 2 tests in 0.014s

OK
Exargs: /usr/bin/python: terminated by signal 6
make: *** [test] Error 125

I am wondering if this is the result of using libgcj-4.0.1 (standard with
Fedora Core 4).  It is not easy for me to patch this package if that is
the problem.  However, the problem is not the same one reported in the
GCC mailing list; garbage collection does not fail:

Python 2.4.1 (#1, May 16 2005, 15:19:29)
[GCC 4.0.0 20050512 (Red Hat 4.0.0-5)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import PyLucene
>>> PyLucene.System.gc()
>>>

I am already somewhat committed to PyLucene, since I  got my
project to work last year with PyLucene 1.0.  I would very
much like to upgrade to PyLucene 2.0 because the Lucene 2.0 API
is not backwards compatible.

-- 
  /\  Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
 /  \ Home page: http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~greg/
 \  / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
  \/  * All the math that's fit to e-print *