Hey folks, I just wanted to let you all know about a new feature just
committed yesterday (now available in the solr-2006-11-15 nightly build).
While Solr has always had some really handy hooks for loading your own
code to do analysis, request handlers, output writers, field types, cache
implementations, and all sorts of other goodies, It wasn't until I
started trying to document how to *use* custom code in various Servlet
Containers that I realized it was pretty much impossible unless you:
a) repackaged the Solr WAR with your code inside.
or b) used Caucho Resin.
(guess which servlet container I've been using)
Which brings us to the new functionality: It's now possible to create a
"lib/" directory inside of your Solr Home directory, and place JARs in
that lib directory containing custom code you'd like to use -- Solr will
look at JARs in this directory when resolving class references you may
have in your solrconfig.xml and schema.xml.
This has been tested in a variety of different servlet containers, and
seems to work fine -- but I'd like to request that anyone currently
"repacking" the solr.war to include any other code try using this new
functionality instead, and report any bugs you may encounter (along with
info about your OS, the Servlet Container you are using, the relevant
configuration files, etc...)
Repacking the solr.war to include your code will always be an option
available to Solr users who want a single WAR containing everything they
care about, but the goal of this new functionality is to make it easier to
use custom plugins without needing to jump through the repacking hoops.
More information about Plugins can be found on the wiki...
http://wiki.apache.org/solr/SolrPlugins
More information about this feature can be found in Jira...
http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SOLR-68
-Hoss
