Variables stored inside the Recoll configuration files control which areas of the file system are indexed, and how files are processed. The values can be set by editing the text files. Most of the more commonly used ones can also be adjusted by using the dialogs in the recoll GUI.
The first time you start recoll, you will be
asked whether or not you would like it to build the index. If you
want to adjust the configuration before indexing, just click
Cancel at this point, which will get you into
the configuration interface. If you exit at this point,
recoll will have created a default configuration
directory with empty configuration files, which you can then
edit.
The configuration is documented inside the installation chapter of this document, or in the recoll.conf(5) manual page. Both documents are automatically generated from the comments inside the configuration file.
The most immediately useful variable
is probably
topdirs,
which lists the subtrees and files to be indexed.
The applications needed to index file types other than text, HTML or email (e.g.: pdf, postscript, ms-word...) are described in the external packages section.
There are two incompatible types of Recoll indexes, depending on the treatment of character case and diacritics. A further section describes the two types in more detail. The default type is appropriate in most cases.
