Helm interface for the recoll desktop search tool.

• Create recoll indexes
• Configure
• Installation

Create recoll indexes

First you have to create an index for each directory you want to index, for this create some directories like “~/.recoll-<your-directory-name>” then create “recoll.conf” config files in each directory containing topdirs = <full/path/to/your/directory> then run recollindex -c ~/.recoll-<your-directory-name> to create index for each directory. See https://bitbucket.org/medoc/recoll/wiki/MultipleIndexes for more infos.

You can also create recoll index directories from helm-find-files by adding following code to your config:

(defun helm-ff-recoll-index-directory (directory)
  "Create a recoll index directory from DIRECTORY.
Add the new created directory to `helm-recoll-directories' using the
basename of DIRECTORY as name.
By using `customize-set-variable', a new source is created for this
new directory."
  (cl-assert (boundp 'helm-recoll-directories) nil
             "Package helm-recoll not installed or configured")
  (let* ((bn (helm-basename (expand-file-name directory)))
         (index-dir (format "~/.recoll-%s" bn))
         (conf-file (expand-file-name "recoll.conf" index-dir))) 
    (mkdir index-dir)
    (with-current-buffer (find-file-noselect conf-file)
      (insert (format "topdirs = %s" (expand-file-name directory)))
      (save-buffer)
      (kill-buffer))
    (customize-set-variable 'helm-recoll-directories
                            (append `((,bn . ,index-dir)) helm-recoll-directories))
    (message "Don't forget to index config directory with 'recollindex -c %s'" index-dir)))

(defmethod helm-setup-user-source ((source helm-source-ffiles))
  (helm-source-add-action-to-source-if
   "Recoll index directory"
   'helm-ff-recoll-index-directory
   source
   'file-directory-p
   3))

You will just need to index recoll directory with same recollindex command as described above.

Configure

Then you need to create some helm-recoll sources before you can use them. You can create sources by customizing helm-recoll-directories (NOT setq).

Then just call M-x helm-recoll will build a specific command for each directory and the specific sources for these directories.

Installation

After customizing helm-recoll-directories (see above) just require helm-recoll or even better autoload the helm-recoll function. If you use use-package you can use e.g.

(use-package helm-recoll
    :commands helm-recoll
    :init (setq helm-recoll-directories
                '(("confdir" . "~/.recoll-.emacs.d")
                  ("lisp sources" . "~/.recoll-elisp")
                  ("work" . "~/.recoll-work"))))

Otherwise add a require statement for the library:

(require 'helm-recoll)

to your init file and setup helm-recoll-directories using customize-set-variable (not setq).