Release notes for Recoll 1.24.x

Caveats

The .xls (MS Excel) handler needs the python2 future package (for the builtins module).

Installing over an older version

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).

1.20-24 indexes are fully compatible. Installing 1.24 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, 1.24 search can mostly use an 1.19 index.

New index format with Xapian 1.4: the default on-disk format of Xapian 1.4 (Glass) has changed to improve performance of phrase searches. This had the infortunate consequence of rendering the Recoll snippets generation method excessively slow except for very small indexes. In consequence, new indexes created by Recoll 1.24 using Xapian 1.4 have a different format and store the document texts inside the index. No specific action is required from the user, except if you have and old index and want to use the new format (nicer snippets, faster phrase searches), in which case you should delete the old index (see next).

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

Changes in Recoll 1.24.0

The main change is the new snippets generation method.