How to add sphinx engine to mysql 5.7?

Question

On my Ubuntu 18.04 machine using mysql 5.7 I have installed sphinxsearch 2.2 and now I'd like to add SphinxSE as an engine so that I can connect to it without language-specific medium.

The docs on sphinix is rather old (for MySQL 5.1.x) and involves compiling mysql from source which I shy away from as it may break the existing stuff.

So I'm wondering if there is any straightforward solution for this which does not require source compilation?

Answer 1

Install MariaDB which will run on top of a MySQL-5.7 data directory. This has SphinxSE included in every mariadb-server package on Ubuntu.

You will need to install the plugin:

INSTALL SONAME 'ha_sphinx';

Please check the incompatibility documentation and make a backup before upgrading.

Note there is little effort being put into maintaining SphinxSE (note MariaDB is a few versions behind the latest 2.11, only minor differences looking at code), and that it has been dropped from SphinxSE 3.0 onward.

I agree its a beautiful piece of software, and I know of one large production use of SphinxSE from a former client of mine who's websites are still running and appear to be using it still.