2.3. Indexing configuration

Variables set inside the Recoll configuration files control which areas of the file system are indexed, and how files are processed. These variables can be set either by editing the text files or using the dialogs in the recoll GUI.

You can also use multiple indexes defined by separate configurations, typically to separate personal and shared indexes, or to take advantage of the organization of your data to improve search precision.

The first time you start recoll, you will be asked whether or not you would like it to build the index. If you want to adjust the configuration before indexing, just click Cancel at this point, which will get you into the configuration interface. If you exit at this point, recoll will have created a ~/.recoll directory containing empty configuration files, which you can edit by hand.

The configuration is documented inside the installation chapter of this document, or in the recoll.conf(5) man page, but the most current information will most likely be the comments inside the sample file. The most immediately useful variable you may interested in is probably topdirs, which determines what subtrees get indexed.

The applications needed to index file types other than text, HTML or email (ie: pdf, postscript, ms-word...) are described in the external packages section

2.3.1. The indexing configuration GUI

Most parameters for a given indexing configuration can be set from a recoll GUI running on this configuration (either as default, or by setting RECOLL_CONFDIR or the -c option.)

The interface is started from the Preferences menu. It has two main panels. The first panel allows setting global variables, like the list of top directories or the list of skipped paths. The second panel allows setting variables that can be redefined for subdirectories. This second panel has an initially empty list of customisation directories, to which you can add. The variables are then set for the currently selected directory (or at the top level if the empty line is selected).

The meaning for most entries in the interface is self-evident and documented by a ToolTip popup on the text label. For more detail, you will need to refer to the configuration section of this guide.

The configuration tool normally respects the comments and most of the formatting inside the configuration file, so that it is quite possible to use it on hand-edited files, which you might nevertheless want to backup first...