[Koha] Solr and enhanced searching (WAS: Re: Koha Digest, Vol 80, Issue 40)

[Chris Cormack]

On 26 June 2012 19:12, Stacy Pober <stacy.pober at manhattan.edu> wrote:
> Jared,
>
> Thank you for the explanation.
>
> When I looked at the link you provided:
> http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=8233
> I was surprised to see the heading:
> "*Bug 8233* <http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=8233>-New
> search engine layer - introduce solr without breaking anything else"
>
> Isn't the "without breaking anything else" something that is assumed in the
> software development process?
>
Yes it is, that's what we have unit testing and regression testing
for. You can actually follow the continuous integration testing here
http://jenkins.koha-community.org/ . Here is the master branch
http://jenkins.koha-community.org/job/Koha_master/ (which what will be
the 3.10.0 release). The other active branches are the 'oldstable'
3.6.x branch of which 3.6.6 has just been released. And the 3.8.x
branch, of which 3.8.2 has just been released. This 'bot' jenkins
builds and installs a Koha, and runs over 10,000 tests every time
anything changes, trying to minimise what is unintentionally broken by
any new feature.

What this bug is actually referring to is the fact that Koha has been
able to work with Solr for nearly 2 years now, but that implementation
was a replacement of Zebra. IE removing zebra and adding Solr. This
new implementation (which works very well so far) instead allows the
Library to choose between Zebra or Solr. IE it is Solr added without
removing Zebra support.
What is even better is that it allows us to add any number of
different indexing engines.

A lot of our bugs have tongue and cheek, or ironic names. Some are
just silly fun, this is one of my favourites
http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=5158.
Sometimes some of us (well mainly me) go a little crazy
http://blog.bigballofwax.co.nz/2010/12/14/what-happens-after-updating-the-status-of-300-bugs/

But like Tom Robbins said "It is a grave and dangerous mistake to take
oneself too seriously"

:)

Chris