Rails search engine without additional running server?

Is this possible? I’ve looked at ferret and was dismayed to find that
it has some major issues with index corruption. Is this still the
case?

Are my only alternatives to date Sphinx and Solr? I don’t wish to
setup a java server (seems to defeat the purpose of going with RoR in
the first place). Anyone have experiences with both can can say one
is comparatively better than the other (in terms of bugs and gotchas.)

Ray