FAQ

Table of Contents

This FAQ is about ferret, the ruby search engine library based on Apache Lucene. Please refer to the acts_as_ferret Homepage for Questions regarding the rails plugin.

  1. General:
    1. What is Ferret?
    2. Who is writing Ferret?
    3. Is Ferret ready to use?
    4. When will it be ready to use?
    5. Where can I get the API docs for ferret?
    6. How do I contribute an improvement?
    7. How else can I contribute?
    8. Is there a mailing list for Ferret?

  1. Definitions:
    1. What is Ferret?
    2. What is Lucene?
    3. What is cFerret?
    4. What is a document?
    5. What is a field?
    6. What is a field-info?
    7. What is a term-vector?
    8. What are term-offsets?

  1. Installation:
    1. How do I install ferret?
    2. How do I uninstall ferret?
    3. How can I use a different version of Ferret?
    4. RubyGems did not compile the c-extension on my OS, but I want to use …
    5. How can I use the "ruby only" version of ferret?
    6. How can I install the bleeding edge version of Ferret as a gem?
    7. After running 'gem install ferret' successfully, I get the error message …
    8. After running 'gem install ferret' successfully, I get the error message …
      1. It is still not working, what else can I do?
      2. It is still not working, what else can I do?

  1. Indexing:
    1. How do I switch off stop-word removal?
    2. How do you create the first index?
    3. What is the default fieldinfo?
    4. Can I add new fields after I've created the FieldInfos?
    5. What happens if I add new Fields to the Index later on?
    6. What happens if I try to add a Field to the index, that is already in …
    7. Is there a way to optimize the Index?
    8. How to index all files under a directory?
    9. How to index an IMAP directory?
    10. How can I crawl external content and add it to my index?
    11. How to remove all documents from index?
    12. Can I use an index that was build with Lucene?
    13. How to use Ferret on an Existing Java Lucene Index?

  1. Searching:
    1. How can I search in an Index?
    2. Is it possible to search in more than just one Index at a time?
    3. How can I sort the results?
    4. I get incorrect results when searching for words like "or", "and", "the", …

  1. Donations:
    1. Who receives the donations?
    2. Why the decision to start accepting donations?
    3. How are you going to use the donations?
    4. I have a feature request that I would be willing to pay for. How do I make …
    5. Any recognition for donors (list, linkback, plaque in city hall, etc)?