gawells writes

Hi

I’ve compiled and installed recoll with --enable-xattr and created the following "fields" file in /.recoll:

[prefixes]
tag = XT

[stored]
tag=

[xattrtofields]
user.tag = tag

As a test I created I file using the user.tag attribute (ext4 filesystem):

setfattr -n user.tag -v orangefish xattr.test

However I can’t find it when searching with "tag:orangefish" or in advanced search either ("tag" is listed, however). Is there something I still need to do to make this work?

medoc writes

Hi,

There are 2 issues with your "fields" file, and I had a hard time finding them …

This should be better documented, but few people use the xattr feature, I think mainly because user xattrs are difficult to use in general because of bad support from most utilities.

Anyway please try to:

  • Use the simple tag name in the "xattrtofields" section on the left side of the assignment, not "user.xxx"

  • Not use "tag" as a recoll field name because it is listed as an alias for "keywords" somewhere else in the standard "fields" file (I had a really hard time with this one, just couldn’t see what was happening).

So something like the following should work:

[prefixes]
mytag = XT
[stored]
mytag=
[xattrstofields]
tag=mytag

Please let me know how this works for you, it seems to work ok for me, if this is a success, I’ll improve the documentation.

Cheers,

jf

medoc writes

Ok, I tried to edit the previous comment but bitbucket ate my changes along with all the paragraphs. Here I come again:

Hi,

There are 2 issues with your "fields" file, and I had a hard time finding them ...

This should be better documented, but few people use the xattr feature, I think mainly because user xattrs are difficult to use in general because of bad support from most utilities.

Anyway please try to:

  • Use the simple tag name in the "xattrtofields" section on the left side of the assignment, not "user.xxx"

  • Not use "tag" as a recoll field name because it is listed as an alias for "keywords" somewhere else in the standard "fields" file (I had a really hard time with this one, just couldn’t see what was happening).

So something like the following should work:

[prefixes]
mytag = XT
[stored]
mytag=
[xattrstofields]
tag=mytag

Also, ".test" is not a recognized suffix, so recoll will rely on "file -i" output which is sometimes less than reliable, please rather use ".txt".

Please let me know how this works for you, it seems to work ok for me. If this is a success, I'll improve the documentation.

Cheers,

jf

gawells writes

Hi

Thanks! That seems to work. I’ve been thinking it would useful to do a desktop search with user defined tags. So far this is the only solution I’ve found. I guess simply being able to search for the presence of tags would work too, but this should get me started :)

cheers Gordon

medoc writes

Not to recommend a "competitor", but wasn’t user tagging one of the strong points and motivation of the Tracker Gnome project? Not that I have followed this closely actually, but I am surprised.

Glad it worked anyway

Cheers

jf

gawells writes

Thanks

Will take a look, although I don’t use gnome much. If tags can migrate with files during copies and moves that would be good.

g