Hi, Andrew and all the other code4libbers,

I wanted to add that if your goal is to prepare for the pre-
conference, it probably isn't necessary to get down and dirty with
the lucene libraries. Of course I would never discourage anyone from
playing around with them, but at the same time please don't feel you
need to do that in order to participate in the pre-conference.

Before solr, if you wanted to use lucene you had to call the low-
level lucene libraries directly and write your own lucene
implementation. Solr provides a very convenient wrapper for it all,
though, and it's much easier to use. Instead of accessing the lucene
libraries directly, you just fire up solr, massage your data into an
XML file that matches solr's expected input format, and POST your XML
file to a solr URL. They even provide you with a script to do the
POSTing. You can learn all this from the solr demo and tutorial,
available here: http://incubator.apache.org/solr/tutorial.html

So, if you're not all that good with java, and you just want to be
able to create and search a lucene index without spending the next
month learning a new programming language, I strongly recommend
skipping the lucene bit and jumping right into solr.

Just my $0.02,
Bess

On Jan 11, 2007, at 11:26 AM, Erik Hatcher wrote:

> Andrew,
>
>
>
>
> On Jan 11, 2007, at 10:47 AM, Andrew Darby wrote:
>> Hello, all.  I'm trying to get started with Lucene for the Code4Lib
>> preconference
>
> Excellent!!!
>
>> and was wondering if someone could help.
>
> Of course....
>
>> I'm trying to
>> do the first example from the Lucene site
>> (http://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/demo.html) on my Windows XP
>> machine but when I try to build the test index from the command line
>> like so:
>>
>> C:\lucene-2.0.0>java org.apache.lucene.demo.IndexFiles C:
>> \lucene-2.0.0/src
>>
>> I get the following error:
>>
>> Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError:
>> org/apache/lucene/demo/IndexFiles
>>
>> My CLASSPATH looks like this:
>>
>> .;C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTSystem\QTJava.zip;C:\lucene-2.0.0
>> \build\lucene-core-2.0.1-dev.jar;C:\lucene-2.0.0\build\lucene-
>> demos-2.0.1-dev.jar;
>
> 2.0.1?  Where'd you get that version?
>
> I pulled down the latest stable release, 2.0.0, just now to run
> through this myself.
>
> Rather than setting CLASSPATH (an evil thing in the Java world, it
> can really bite you at inopportune times), I ran it this way
> successfully:
>
> java -cp lucene-core-2.0.0.jar:lucene-demos-2.0.0.jar
> org.apache.lucene.demo.IndexFiles src/
>
>> I assume this is a basic error, and something to do with the
>> classpath, but as best I can tell everything is correct, the
>> IndexFiles.class file is where it should be, etc.  I'm not familiar
>> with Java, if you haven't guessed.  Any suggestions?
>
> Sadly the demo that ships with Lucene is pretty weak.  For more
> examples, grab the Lucene in Action (LIA) codebase from http://
> www.lucenebook.com and fire it up simply by typing "ant" and
> following the instructions in the README too.  That code is for
> Lucene 1.4.3 - 1.9.x.  Lucene 2.0 removed deprecated methods, and
> there are a few tidbits of trivia to adjust LIA code to Lucene 2.0
> available here:
>
>        <http://www.nabble.com/Lucene-in-Action-examples-complie-
> problem-
> tf2418478.html#a6743189>
>
> The demo that ships with Lucene is barely usable for anything other
> than "yeah, it can search text, but boy is it a hassle to run".  Keep
> in mind that Lucene is a low-level library, so for there to be much
> of use out of it, you have to build something around it.  The Indexer
> and Searcher command-line apps in the LIA code base provide a better
> working demo "out of the box", but still quite crude.
>
>        Erik

Elizabeth (Bess) Sadler
Head, Technical and Metadata Services
Digital Scholarship Services
Box 400129
Alderman Library
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22904

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