I have been struggling with what I believe to be one of the strongest reasons for using Haiku: the BFS indexing and search capability. However, I have yet to be able to get it to work as expected. Queries using the default attributes (e.g. name) provide results. Queries using new attributes produce strange results. I believe I have followed the process correctly, and have tried it with files that have pre-defined attributes (like email), and also with new attributes. In either case, I add the attribute to the index and confirm using lsindex. I then issue the reindex command; this does not function as I expect it to. I would expect reindex -rv * to reindex everything in the current directory and below, and provide verbose output on the terminal. However, the most it ever does is delay for a period of time, with never any terminal output. I have cut/pasted and copied existing files to force indexing, with spurious results. Usually, the queries with the added attributes produce no outputs at all. Sometimes results pop up in a query window when copying files, only to have the results disappear when the query is restarted. This suggests that the index had been updated, but then (possibly) reverted to the original state. Where is the index, and how should I go about debugging this problem? I have not seen a bug report like this, so it may be that I have a problem with my setups. I have been using Haiku in a VM since R3, and installed it on hardware at R4; currently running hrev45186, but the issue has been the same since the first installation.
This forum isn’t really the best for this kind of question. This is more of a user forum. I suggest filing a bug-report at https://dev.haiku-os.org/ (it’s good to do for suspected problems so it can be investigated and resolved properly) or join the haiku-development mailing list and ask the question there.
I can’t help with this problem but suggest that you either file a bug report or post on the developer mailing list, as people who really know how to answer this are not that likely to read the forum.
As far as I know the index is part of the filesystem, and as far as I was aware it shouldn’t need to be re-indexed as the database filesystem should just index files as you create them or add/remove attributes.
BTW, I presume you mean alpha 3 and alpha 4, be careful here since R3/R4 would imply release 3/release 4, the developers are working their way towards R1, so R3/R4 are a very long way off indeed…