Lately I’ve been doing a lot of coding around an awesome database called Hyper Estraier, which allows me to create large inverted-index databases to search over very quickly.

I have also been playing around with the new Ruby RC release for version 1.9.1. In an effort to get some current code running, I found that hyperestraier doesn’t compile the native ruby bindings using 1.9.1 correctly. You’ll see this error when attempting to compile:

~/hyperestraier-1.4.13/rubynative$ make
( cd src && if ! [ -f Makefile ] ; then /usr/local/bin/ruby extconf.rb ; fi )
checking for estraier.h... yes
checking for main() in -lestraier... yes
creating Makefile
( cd src && make )
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/hinmanm/hyperestraier-1.4.13/rubynative/src'
gcc -I. -I/usr/local/include/ruby-1.9.1/i686-linux -I/usr/local/include/ruby-1.9.1/ruby/backward -I/usr/local/include/ruby-1.9.1 -I. -DHAVE_ESTRAIER_H  -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -fPIC -I. -I.. -I../.. -I/usr/include/estraier  -I/usr/include/qdbm -Wall  -O2 -g -Wall -Wno-parentheses -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -fforce-addr  -o estraier.o -c estraier.c
estraier.c: In function ‘doc_make_snippet’:
estraier.c:354: error: ‘struct RArray’ has no member named ‘len’
estraier.c: In function ‘db_search_meta’:
estraier.c:767: error: ‘struct RArray’ has no member named ‘len’
estraier.c: In function ‘objtocblist’:
estraier.c:1192: error: ‘struct RArray’ has no member named ‘len’
estraier.c:1195: error: ‘struct RString’ has no member named ‘ptr’
estraier.c:1195: error: ‘struct RString’ has no member named ‘len’
estraier.c: In function ‘objtocbmap’:
estraier.c:1221: error: ‘struct RArray’ has no member named ‘len’
estraier.c:1227: error: ‘struct RString’ has no member named ‘ptr’
estraier.c:1227: error: ‘struct RString’ has no member named ‘len’
estraier.c:1228: error: ‘struct RString’ has no member named ‘ptr’
estraier.c:1228: error: ‘struct RString’ has no member named ‘len’
make[1]: *** [estraier.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/hinmanm/hyperestraier-1.4.13/rubynative/src'
make: *** [all] Error 2

This error comes from a not-so-great practice of using RSTRING(foo)->len and RARRAY(bar)->ptr in the code, which was removed in Ruby 1.9.1. The correct way to fix this is to make these changes:

RSTRING(foo)->len and RSTRING(foo)->ptr
becomes:
RSTRING_LEN(foo) and RSTRING_PTR(foo)

RARRAY(bar)->len and RARRAY(bar)->ptr
becomes:
RARRAY_LEN(bar) and RARRAY_PTR(bar)

For HyperEstraier, this is a pretty quick fix, there’s a link to the patch at the bottom of this post, after downloading, simply do:

[4:hinmanm@dagger:~]% cd hyperestraier-1.4.13/rubynative/src
[4:hinmanm@dagger:~/hyperestraier-1.4.13/rubynative/src]% patch < ~/hyperestraier-ruby191.patch
patching file estraier.c
[4:hinmanm@dagger:~/hyperestraier-1.4.13/rubynative/src]% cd ../
[4:hinmanm@dagger:~/hyperestraier-1.4.13/rubynative]% ./configure && make && sudo make install

And Hyper Estraier should be installed and ready to use in ruby 1.9.1 RC1! Enjoy!

Download the patch: [hyperestraier-ruby191.patch]