recoll: indexed file searching that works

Today I discovered recoll, a tool for indexing files (i.e. both file names and contents, and including emails) and running searches over the index. It has both graphical and command-line interfaces, and unlike some other open-source tools that claim to do this job, it really seems to work. While traditional tools like grep and find work fine, grep for example was not designed to run searches with multiple search keys, and neither of them use an index, so every search walks the filesystem anew. Another traditional tool, locate, uses an index for speed, but it only knows how to search filenames (and paths), not file contents.

Anyway, recoll appears to be the open-source file indexing and searching tool that I was looking for. Here's how to install it in openSUSE:

Index and search email archive

Program to index and search archive of old emails: mairix

http://www.rpcurnow.force9.co.uk/mairix/

On openSUSE 12.3:

# zypper in mairix