I really want to use Xapian on a project, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to install it on Windows!

Question

If this was on a linux box I'd be set, but there's a distinct lack of documentation!

I want to use this with c# and the omega indexing app.

There doesn't seem to be any documentation on how to actually BUILD xapian & omega on windows (or, pre-compiled binaries which would work fine).

Answer 1

I published an article on what I had to do to get this up and running: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/library/XapianUnderWindows.aspx

Answer 2

I maintain the Windows precompiled binaries, I'm happy to help if I can - you can reach me via the Flax website.

Answer 3

From the Xapian downloads page: it says you can use Cygwin or MSYS+mingw or makefiles for MSVC and pre-built binaries

Answer 4

You can download binaries and all you need to build recent releases of Xapian, Omega and most of the language bindings on Windows using Microsoft Visual C++ 7.0 or above from here:

http://www.flax.co.uk/xapian_windows.shtml

Answer 5

You have done a great job modifying header files and stuff, but as a windows user I miss a classical - build your dll and forget it.

It seems really weird that this application does not seem to have a simple dll that php extension and everything else can link to.

I need to write my own kwd producer, so i will link against all the source files (i heard there are lib files somewhere, but building example indexer with VS7 i didn't seem to find a way to make them, yet).

On the plus side, to my disbelief I was able to compile simpleindexer example after following your last paragraph in read-me file.

and still - a nice VC6 project file wouldn't hurt.! :)

Answer 6

Janisb - there are already PHP bindings for Xapian, that wrap all the Xapian class definitions. You can download prebuilt binaries for these at the website above.

Sean, thanks for all your work - once I track down the appropriate 64bit resources (oh and some spare time ;-) I'll be adding this to the Windows build files. I agree the documentation is sparse, but the main development is Unix based so we're always playing catch-up to some degree. Patches to the current documentation are very welcome via the Xapian bug tracker (accessible from www.xapian.org).