Bug#492157: ITP: apollo -- The Apollo Solr Server

[Paul Waite]

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Paul Waite <paul@...>

* Package name    : apollo
  Version         : 1.8.0
  Upstream Author :
* URL             : http://lucene.apache.org/solr/
* License         : GPL, Apache 2.0, CDDL 1.0, BSD, MIT
  Programming Lang: (C, C++, C#, Perl, Python, etc.)
  Description     : The Apollo Solr Server

The Apollo Solr Server is a debian packaging of the standard Solr Server
available from the Apache project (http://lucene.apache.org/solr/). This
package can be installed with replication enabled, either as a Master or
a Slave. The latter is set up for you to rsync from the Master via cron.

This apollo package also supports any number of instances of Solr,
running on separate ports. These are managed via a common utility 'apollo'
to provide create, remove, purge, start, stop, restart, and status.

The package also includes a MaoriMacronsFilter plugin which can be set up
in your schema.xml to map macronned characters to stright ascii on both
index and query operations. The default schema.xml has this set up for
the 'text' field type already. It is a trivial exercise to provide other
mappings.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (900, 'stable'), (400, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (x86_64)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-6-amd64
Locale: LANG=en_NZ.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_NZ.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)



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[Guus Sliepen]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 03:47:53PM +1200, Paul Waite wrote:

>   Description     : The Apollo Solr Server

That is not a description, that's just the full name. What does this
package do? I cannot find any answer in the long description either. The
project website mentions that it is an "enterprise search server". Still
vague, but I guess it is something equivalent to htdig. Both the short
and long description should make clear that this is a web-based search
engine/server/whatever.

> The Apollo Solr Server is a debian packaging of the standard Solr Server
> available from the Apache project (http://lucene.apache.org/solr/). This

There is no need to mention that this is a Debian package. Also, the URL
to the project page is already in the Homepage: header, there is no need
to repeat it.

> package can be installed with replication enabled, either as a Master or
> a Slave. The latter is set up for you to rsync from the Master via cron.
>
> This apollo package also supports any number of instances of Solr,
> running on separate ports. These are managed via a common utility 'apollo'
> to provide create, remove, purge, start, stop, restart, and status.
>
> The package also includes a MaoriMacronsFilter plugin which can be set up
> in your schema.xml to map macronned characters to stright ascii on both
> index and query operations. The default schema.xml has this set up for
> the 'text' field type already. It is a trivial exercise to provide other
> mappings.

The rest of the description reads like a manual page, not like a
description of the features of Solr.

Then, where does the name "Apollo" come from? I do not see any
reference to that name on the Solr website.

Finally, it seems Solr is already packaged by the Debian Java
Maintainers, see http://packages.debian.org/solr-tomcat5.5. If there is
anything in your package that is not in theirs, please coordinate with
them.

--
Met vriendelijke groet / with kind regards,
      Guus Sliepen <guus@...>

[Paul Waite]

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Hi Guus,

Your other comments are out of date (see the BTS for full bug report
e-mail conversation), however many thanks for your reply. This feedback
is important though:

> Finally, it seems Solr is already packaged by the Debian Java
> Maintainers, see http://packages.debian.org/solr-tomcat5.5. If there is
> anything in your package that is not in theirs, please coordinate with
> them.

I'll start out by saying that I'm quite happy NOT to package this
separately if that's the general consensus. In fact, I hoped this
particular discussion would ensue as I certainly don't want to be
spending my time maintaining a package that nobody wants!

However in reply to the above suggestion, I would point out that apollo
takes a different approach to theirs, as it creates a single instance of
the jetty-based example from the Solr tarball, then constructs a
framework around that which provides two important features lacking in
the above:

  master/slave replication, out-of-the-box from debconf
  multiple Solr instances running on the same machine

Apollo also installs nicely on the current stable (etch) which was one
of the drivers for creating something myself, and not using the above,
which at the time of testing did not. Apollo has been running on etch in
our client production systems for a year now. Given that lenny is not
yet released, and even when it is there will be a *lot* of etch servers
running out there for a long while, I think this is still a very useful
attribute.

I obviously looked at the above Debian Maintainers packages solr-common,
solr-jetty and solr-tomcat initially, when starting out to build the
above-mentioned applications for our clients, however the fact that they
didn't install on our stable (etch) production servers was a blocker.
Hence apollo came into being.

I should also add that apollo is currently built as a native Debian
package, where the Solr tarball is downloaded in the build process, and
then bits of it used to construct the apollo binary package.

I look forward to your comments on the above, and also on this packaging
approach. If you (or anyone) wants a preview of the package, then let me
know.

As I began by saying, it could be that this package isn't deemed to be
useful or suitable for Debian. That's fine with me, my motivation was to
make available something that I had already built and am currently using
in production systems, to other potential users of Solr.

Cheers,
Paul.
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[Paul Waite]

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On further reflection I have decided to withdraw apollo from ITP for now.

Although I believe it would be very useful for folks wishing to use Solr
in multiple instances with replication out-of-the-box, I now believe
there are still some issues around the packaging of it that I want to
resolve first.

Many thanks to all who contributed to this with feedback.

Cheers,
Paul.
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[Guus Sliepen]

On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 09:00:52AM +1200, Paul wrote:

[...]
> I should also add that apollo is currently built as a native Debian
> package, where the Solr tarball is downloaded in the build process, and
> then bits of it used to construct the apollo binary package.

Ok I see now that you have added your own enhancements to Solr. In that
case, maybe it is better not to make a native Debian package, but to
create your own "upstream" project, or of course try to get your
enhancements merged with the original Solr project. In case they do not
want to merge, you should make an official Apollo Solr website (you can
use alioth.debian.org for that I think). That way other distributions
can also easily track your progress and make packages out of it.

--
Met vriendelijke groet / with kind regards,
      Guus Sliepen <guus@...>