uncaught C++ exception from Perl Search::Xapian XS?

[Eric Wong]

Olly Betts <olly at survex.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 11:46:04AM +0000, Eric Wong wrote:
> > I'm using Search::Xapian XS from Debian stable and I'm getting what
> > appears to be an unwrapped C++ exception:
> > 
> >   terminate called after throwing an instance of 'Xapian::DatabaseModifiedError'
> > 
> > Using `eval' from Perl5 doesn't seem effective in catching it.
> > 
> > I'm using postlist_begin, postlist_end and ++ to iterate a
> > PositionIterator, and reading XS/*Iterator.xs, I see the XS
> > wrappers are missing:
> 
> FWIW, postlist_begin gives you a PostingIterator (positionlist_begin
> would give you a PositionIterator).

Erm, yes.  I was sleepy :x

> >   try { } catch { handle_exception(); }
> > 
> > in several places.  Not sure if that's it or if something
> > else (I know C, but am not remotely fluent in C++).
> 
> That is indeed what's missing.
> 
> I'm open to clean patches to address issues in Search::Xapian still,
> but it's probably simplest to use the Perl bindings from
> xapian-bindings, which do handle exceptions here (the exception handling
> is generated automatically).

OK, I'll try to get to it later this week, and I guess I also
missed the bookworm freeze, too :<

I can't expect most users to use non-distro packages, though;
so it'd be great if Debian gets the SWIG Perl bindings (unless I
missed it).

Is there a git repo for Search::Xapian?  Or I can just generate
patches via tarball retrieved from `apt-get source libsearch-xapian-perl`.

> This is unlikely to be something that we can fix in a debian stable
> release (because it doesn't seem to fit Debian's release critical bug
> definition), so you'll need to build your own bindings rather than using
> the package from debian stable.

Understood.  I'm also working around it by forking off (yet
another) process atm so the error gets contained.