en/LXR 0.9-0.10 Tools Installation

Releases LXR 0.9 and 0.10 are deprecated, information is kept here only for historical record.

These releases contain numerous bugs, some of which can be qualified "blocking". If you are considering installing a fresh LXR service, always prefer the latest release. You will experience a dramatic performance boost and installation is a lot easier.

Bug reports will not be accepted.

The current version of LXR depends on the software tools enumerated below. Instructions are given for Linux, but similar steps can be inferred for Windows or other OSes.

In all cases, the preferred method of installation of these tools is a package download of your favourite distribution, so that you do not bother with compiling and configuring the tool, which may require expertise beyond the need of using LXR. If you really must compile and configure, refer to the appropriate documentation for installing each tool. There is usually a fairly automated procedure.

A Perl interpreter
Installed by default in nearly every distribution.
Check it is version 5.10 or higher, because LXR relies on features introduced in this version. Type the following in a terminal: $ perl -v This is perl 5, version 14, subversion 2 (v5.14.2) built for …
A recent version of the exuberant ctags program
Usually installed from a package of your distribution. As a last resort, it is available from SourceForge
For "recent", read version 5 or higher. Type this in a terminal: $ ctags --version Exuberant Ctags 5.8, Copyright (C) 1996-2009 Darren Hiebert …
- Version 0.10 You can launch automatically these two tests once you have installed LXR and before you start the painful configuration step. See next page.
A relational database
MySQL 4.x/5.x, Postgresql and Oracle are supported. You will also need the right Perl DBI drivers for your particular database, usually available from CPAN (if not in your distribution).
A webserver
Apache httpd with mod_perl is recommended. Both may be installed from a package.
LXR works with Apache 1 and Apache 2 (see server configuration).
For free-text searching, either Glimpse or Swish-e version 2.1 or later Swish-e is fully GPL'ed ~~while Glimpse is only free for non-commercial use~~. Thus you have little chance to find it among your distribution packages, but installing it is quite automated.
How do you choose between them?
- Glimpse gives you access to the line of the occurrence and can distinguish multiple occurrences within a file.
- Swish-e gives you access to the file containing occurrences, merging all occurrences in a single reference. But it can index CVS repositories (through file copy, which cancels CVS repository size advantage).
The Perl database driver interface DBI and the relevant DBD driver for the database you are using If they are not already installed, you can get them from CPAN. More info here
The Perl File::MMagic module First, try package perl-file-mmagic. If that fails, available from CPAN