[Xapian-devel] Need Beginner Guide for Matcher Optimisations Project

[Olly Betts]

On Mon, Mar 04, 2013 at 06:07:20PM +0530, Lokesh Basu wrote:
> Also, since my timezone is +5:30 GMT, so it's not very easy to get a quick
> response on IRC. Hence, it's really difficult for student like me, who
> needs help regarding alost everything.

There are certainly people in your timezone successfully interacting on
#xapian.  But whatever timezone you're in, you may well not get a quick
response on IRC.  Just ask the question(s) you have and hang around
until someone has a chance to respond.  If you're not able to stay
online or use an IRC proxy, email may be a better communication medium.

> For Beginners :
> 
> Prerequisit for developing for Xapian.
> Step wise installation of tools for development including source code?
> Detailed build instruction for build.

These are all covered by xapian-core/HACKING.  If you're using Debian
or Ubuntu, there are even the commands to install the packages you'll
need.  If you're using a different platform, the lists of tools needed
are in there, but nobody using other platforms has yet supplied lists of
packages.

> How to start with code evaluation?

I'm not sure what you're asking.  What code are you wanting to
evaluate?

> How to fix a bus[possibly a start bug like "Hello Xapian" :-) ] ?

What would such a "how to" look like?

How to actually track down and fix a bug is rather a broad topic (one
bug can be quite different to another).  There are certainly some
general approaches, but none that are specific to Xapian.

HACKING documents the debug logging present in the library, which can
be useful for following what's happening.

And this page documents how to add a new testcase (it's good to have
a regression test for every fixed bug, to make sure it doesn't reappear
in the future):

http://xapian.org/docs/tests

> How to submit a bug?

http://xapian.org/bugs (linked via the navigation bar for the home page)

> Possible reading material for reference regarding development and for
> increasig your knowledge about searching.
> etc.

http://xapian.org/docs/intro_ir

If the page itself is a bit dry and mathematical for your tastes, there
are several books listed at the end, some of which are available online
free of charge.

> [These are just what I could think of, there could be many other thing as
> well.]

See also the internals documentation page:

http://xapian.org/docs/internals

Cheers,
    Olly