Hi nerds,

Ever feel like Zebra is an intimidating black box of mystery? Well, you’re certainly not alone. That’s how I felt when I first encountered it over 10 years ago.

Over the past decade, I’ve read through the C code and submitted issue reports to Indexdata, but it wasn’t until the other day that I decided I’d try hacking on Zebra to try to understand its operation better (especially faceting).

I kept notes of my process for developing and testing Zebra and I’ve posted them to https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Developing_Zebra. Using these straightforward steps you should be able to hack, compile, and run Zebra. (At some stage, I might actually provide a Dockerfile or Docker image that is even more convenient.)

When looking at faceting, I wasn’t able to solve the problem, but I was able to isolate the problematic function by hacking on Zebra, and now I’m waiting to hear back from Indexdata for advice. So I think it was a useful exercise.

I think Tomas has already hacked on Zebra, so he probably doesn’t need this, but I thought it might be interesting for people to review and try if they were interested.

David Cook

Senior Software Engineer

Prosentient Systems

Suite 7.03

6a Glen St

Milsons Point NSW 2061

Australia

Office: 02 9212 0899

Online: 02 8005 0595