How to index the same field multiple ways?

[bithive]

I have noticed that when declaring multiple fields with the same name in a searchable block, the last one wins, even when the dynamic field naming conventions would prevent an actual collision in Solr.

This is what I observe:

# does not get indexed
string :century, multiple: true 

# gets indexed as "century_s"
string :century, multiple: false do
  attributes[:century].join(', ')
end

What I would prefer is:

# gets indexed as "century_sm"
string :century, multiple: true

# gets indexed as "century_s"
string :century, multiple: false do
  attributes[:century].join(', ')
end

In my application I need to index the same fields in different ways to support faceting and sorting, etc. The Sunspot dynamic field naming conventions are convenient for this, but this behavior was unexpected.

Right now I am working around this by changing the name, but it feels a bit redundant since the dynamic field names already capture the distinctions I set up.