See the section describing the use of multiple indexes for generalities. Only the aspects concerning the recoll GUI are described here.
A recoll program instance is always associated with a main index, which is the one to be updated when requested from the menu, but it can use any number of external Recoll indexes for searching. The external indexes can be selected through the External Indexes tab in the preferences dialog, which can be reached either trough: → → or → .
Index selection is performed in two phases. A set of all usable indexes must first be defined, and then the subset of indexes to be used for searching. These parameters are retained across program executions (there are kept separately for each Recoll configuration). The set of all indexes is usually quite stable, while the active ones might typically be adjusted quite frequently.
The main index (defined by RECOLL_CONFDIR) is always active. If this is
undesirable, you can set up your base configuration to index an empty directory.
When adding a new index to the set, you can select either a Recoll configuration directory, or directly a Xapian index directory. In the first case, the Xapian index directory will be obtained from the selected configuration.
If the external index is actually located on a volume mounted from another machine, and references remote files, there may be a need to adjust the result paths so that they match the locally mounted ones (for opening documents). This can be done by using the path translation facility.
As building the set of all indexes can be a little tedious
when done through the user interface, you can use the
RECOLL_EXTRA_DBS environment variable to provide an initial set. This might
typically be set up by a system administrator so that every user does not have to do
it. The variable should define a colon-separated list of index directories, e.g.:
export RECOLL_EXTRA_DBS=/some/place/xapiandb:/some/other/db
On Windows, use semi-colons (;) as separators instead of
colons.
Another environment variable, RECOLL_ACTIVE_EXTRA_DBS allows adding to
the active list of indexes. This variable was suggested and
implemented by a Recoll user. It is mostly useful if you use scripts
to mount external volumes with Recoll indexes. By
using RECOLL_EXTRA_DBS
and RECOLL_ACTIVE_EXTRA_DBS, you can add and
activate the index for the mounted volume when
starting recoll. Unreachable indexes will
automatically be deactivated when starting up.
