[pylucene-dev] About compiling with gcc 4.2

[David Pratt]

Hi Greg. Happy Thanksgiving. The package system for each platform is 
definitely the most transparent means of distributing PyLucene. Each 
platform has maintainers for their package system and usually welcomes 
new ports and maintainers. I was surprised to see a first port of 
PyLucene on the FreeBSD ports system a few days ago. There were no 
binaries, more dependencies than needed and did not work. I emailed the 
maintainer to provide feedback - but at the same time was encouraged to 
see this getting started.

Regards
David

Greg Kuperberg wrote:
> First of all, happy Thanksgiving to everyone.
> 
> On Thu, Nov 23, 2006 at 11:12:12PM -0400, David Pratt wrote:
>> Hi Greg, Andi has been pretty much been single-handedly helping everyone 
>> on this list with very good and timely advice. I think you are a bit off 
>> base with your comments. Admittedly, the compile time is long - but 
>> PyLucene itself is real software ingenuity - and it also takes what it 
>> takes to compile.
> 
> In one respect I didn't quite say it right.  Andi personally has done
> a lot of great work.  Without him there may not even be any PyLucene.
> So Andi has done plenty and I do not by any means mean to say that he
> hasn't done enough.
> 
> I can also concede that installation has been made harder by two things
> that are beyond the control of Andi or anyone else who works on PyLucene.
> One is that there are some apparent stability problems with gcj.
> Another is that Lucene itself had a backwards incompatible upgrade.
> 
>> I am sure Andi would not turn down binaries from folks 
>> who have taken time to compile on various platforms.
> 
> On the other hand, I stand my by comments about what the project needs.
> It's a very interesting project, but it could be much greater, *if*
> it were easier to install.
> 
> I sure do hope that some folks come forward with binaries.  And not just
> binaries, but a useful "configure" script so that people don't have to
> edit Makefiles.  It would make it easier to make the binaries, of course.
> 
> I really have no experience with making binaries or configure files,
> and my own project is already an enormous volunteer effort for me.
> So regrettably I can't help much.
> 
>> As far as documentation, pick up a copy of 'Lucene in action' which is
>> an excellent resource.
> 
> I didn't just pick it up, I bought it and studied it chapter by chapter.
> I did that last year.  Now, Lucene is in some ways a first-rate package,
> but it is *not* easy to use.  Maybe I am old-fashioned, but I think
> that the Lucene API is deeply overwritten.  I only learned the API with
> a lot of trial and error, which was made much harder by the inevitable
> minor discrepancies between the native Java API and Python.
> 
> "Lucene in Action" is a pretty good book.  I learned what I needed
> from it.  But it is not quite excellent.  It has a pervasive
> gee-whiz tone that makes it harder to understand.
> 
> Also, "Lucene in Action" has not been updated for Lucene 2.0 AFAIK.
>