INSTALLDEB-MYSPELL(1)

📦
version 1.31.4 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 INSTALLDEB-MYSPELL(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the manual page for installdeb-myspell — it's a section 1 page, and it's giving "debhelper but make it dictionaries". let's go 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

installdeb-myspell — a debhelper-like helper for Debian packages that ship myspell/hunspell dictionaries, or Openoffice.org thesauri/hyphenation files. 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

installdeb-myspell [--srcdir=dir] [options] [debhelper options]

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

so installdeb-myspell is a debhelper-like program that helps you install myspell/hunspell dicts, plus Openoffice.org thesauri and hyphenation files, working off the contents of an info-myspell file — and that file's format is the one from old Openoffice.org 2. it can also create and install dictionaries in Chromium hunspell binary dic format (.bdic) if the --bdic option is set. all of this needs the --srcdir option enabled, no cap.

⚠️ note that unless you pass --srcdir, this program will literally do nothing. like, zero. nada. the vibe check is empty. 🫠

for more details, go read /usr/share/doc/dictionaries-common/dsdt-policy.txt.

the actions installdeb-myspell executes are the following — though only some of them happen if you're not in o2 compatibility mode:

🧚 Maintainer Scripts

installdeb-myspell installs the necessary scraps of code into the postinst and postrm scripts. no snippets are currently installed. that's it, that's the section 💀

🌈 Language info file

installdeb-myspell will look for a file named debian/info-myspell or debian/package.info-myspell. that file holds myspell/hunspell dictionary, OOO thesauri, or hyphenation information, with lines like

TYPE LANG COUNTRY NAME

a typical info-myspell file for a myspell/hunspell dictionary will contain something like

 # Spanish variants
 DICT es ES es_ES
 DICT es AR es_ES
 ...

while for a typical hyphenation file it'll be something like

 # Danish hyphenation
 HYPH da DK hyph_da_DK

or for a sample thesaurus,

 THES en US th_en_US

all with no leading whitespace, bestie. and yes, commented lines are allowed 👑

🍓 Dictionary, thesaurus and hyphenation files installation

if the --srcdir=dir option is set, installdeb-myspell will look for the .aff/.dic files in the directory specified by dir and install them in the default target directory ([tmpdir]/usr/share/hunspell). the base name gets extracted from the info-myspell file (the last string in the line). and if the target dict uses the ancient Mozilla hyphen form, it gets renamed to the lowbar form on installation. iconic behavior tbh.

same thing (minus the renaming) for hyphenation and thesaurus files — those get installed in [tmpdir]/usr/share/hyphen and [tmpdir]/usr/share/mythes.

if --bdic is set, dicts in Chromium hunspell binary dictionary format will also be created and installed. this requires /usr/lib/qt5/bin/qwebengine_convert_dict (from the qt6-webengine-dev-tools package) to be available.

if --bdic-only is set, only dicts in Chromium hunspell binary dictionary format (.bdic) get handled, and dic, hyphen and thesaurus get disabled (even if they have entries in the info-myspell file). it's equivalent to --bdic --no-dic --no-hyphen --no-thesaurus.

the --no-{dic,hyphen,thesaurus} options exist to disable handling of those files even if they have entries in the info-myspell file. mostly useful for testing.

if --dc-keep is set, temporary files will be preserved once installation is complete. currently this only affects .bdic files.

--bdic, --bdic-only and --no-{dic,hyphen,thesaurus} options require at least dictionaries-common-dev 1.29.0. --dc-clean requires at least dictionaries-common-dev 1.29.3.

installdeb-myspell will, according to info extracted from the info-myspell, automatically set lang_COUNTRY symlinks to the dict files installed by installdeb-myspell. this only happens when the --srcdir option is used.

if the --srcdir option is used and the info-myspell file contains something like

 # Spanish variants
 DICT es ES es
 DICT es AR es
 ...

then installdeb-myspell will automatically set the es_ES and es_AR symlinks. slay ✨

if .bdic is enabled, the associated symlinks get set in the same way.

🦋 Mozilla spellchecker compatibility

for myspell/hunspell dictionaries, Mozilla had a lang{,-COUNTRY} to names translation table using hyphens as separators (and for some languages, not using the country part at all) instead of lowbars.

shortly, that will no longer be the case. Mozilla will also accept the lang_COUNTRY format for that translation table, so no special things will be needed. in particular — and this is important — do not duplicate entries in both lowbar and hyphen forms. use lowbar. periodt.

🌸 Debconf files

as opposed to installdeb-ispell and installdeb-wordlist, installdeb-myspell does nothing related to debconf files — not needed for myspell/hunspell dicts and OOO thesauri and hyphenation files. if you need to add debconf stuff with debhelper, proceed in the usual way and call dh_installdebconf(1) like you would for any other package. 💖

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • --dico-debug — show some installdeb-myspell-specific debugging info. does not enable debhelper debug — you gotta enable that separately, bestie.
  • --srcdir=dir — will look for .aff/.dic files in the specified directory for myspell/hunspell dict packages, for .dic files in Openoffice.org hyphenation packages, and for .dat/.idx files in Openoffice.org thesaurus packages, installing them if present in the default target directory. the base name will be extracted from the info-myspell file. if this option is specified and files are not present, an error will appear. 😭
  • --dico-{no-}alt-links — {process/do not process} alternative symlinks according to info found in the myspell info file.
  • --bdic — enable bdic handling.
  • --bdic-only — only enable .bdic handling, disable {dic,hyphen,thesaurus} installation.
  • --no-{dic,hyphen,thesaurus} — disable {dic,hyphen,thesaurus} handling.

the usual debhelper(7) options are accepted too, obviously 🫶

🔥 NOTES 🔥

this program is not part of debhelper — although it depends on it and is intended to work together with it. they're besties, not the same person.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

debhelper(7)

this program is part of the dictionaries-common-dev package. it's intended for use by maintainers of packages containing myspell/hunspell dictionaries or Openoffice.org thesauri/hyphenation files. see the documentation under /usr/share/doc/dictionaries-common-dev.

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Rafael Laboissiere <rafael@debian.org>, Agustin Martin <agmartin@debian.org>

and that's the whole page, bestie 💜 this one's dictionaries-common-dev version 1.31.4, dated 2026-3-22 — go forth and install your dictionaries, you've got this 🎀✨

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