ISPELL-AUTOBUILDHASH(8)

💖 ISPELL-AUTOBUILDHASH — bestie's guide to ispell-autobuildhash(8) 💖

okay so welcome to the section 8 manual for ispell-autobuildhash, and yes we're gonna make autobuilding ispell hash files feel like a group chat, but every single flag stays exactly where it was, no cap. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

ispell-autobuildhash — Autobuilding the ispell hash file for some dicts 🌸

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

ispell-autobuildhash [--force]

Options:

--debug      Show some extra ispell-autobuildhash information.
--dry-run    Show what would be done, but do nothing real.
--force      Rebuild the hash file for all dicts providing a
             compat file skipping the test.
--triggered  Tell the script that is run in the triggers stage.

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so ispell-autobuildhash is a script that manages the whole autobuild situation for ispell hash files, and it's meant to be called from the dictionaries-common tools. 🫶

Depending on the ispell compatibility level, and on the compatibility level used for the hash file if present, it decides whether that hash file must be rebuilt or not. The way that it only works on ispell packages that were prepared to use it — for any other ispell dict package it will literally do nothing. nothing!! 💀

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🌈 OPTIONS 🌈

• --debug — spill some extra ispell-autobuildhash info. show us the lore. 🔍
• --dry-run — show what would be done, but do nothing real. manifesting the build without actually building, iykyk. ✨
• --force — rebuild the hash file for all dicts providing a compat file, regardless of the compatibility levels found. no vibe check, just build. 🔥
• --triggered — tells the script that it is being run in the triggers stage.
  • When run under dpkg control, do not try to set the 'ispell-autobuildhash' trigger, but run the real ispell-autobuildhash code instead.
  • When not run under dpkg control, real code will always be run and the --triggered option has no real effect. 🙈

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👑 PACKAGE MAINTAINERS 👑

To use this whole system, ispell-autobuildhash expects a $dict.compat file in /var/lib/ispell (where $dict stands for the hash or affix file basename) containing the ispell major or compatibility version for the last successful build, or "0", or an empty file if the hash is to be rebuild — which is exactly the situation for dictionary installation and upgrades. 🍓

When upgrading ispell, the script will check if the version in $dict.compat is different from ispell.compat, and rebuild if so, updating $dict.compat with the new value. The particular way things are done depends on whether your dict has a single source, or a multiple source like ipolish has. 💜

The most common case is having a single source. In this case you must put the $dict.aff file at /usr/lib/ispell/$dict.aff as usual, and the munched wordlist compressed with gzip at /usr/share/ispell/$dict.mwl.gz.

This script supports the way ipolish allows selection of subdictionaries to be put in the hash file. It will detect the presence of the main language .desc file and call update-ipolish-hash as appropriate. 🧚

Although this script looks for the existence of a update-ispell-hash script with supposedly similar functionality to update-ipolish-hash, this latter does not really exist — although it might be added at some time to ispell or to the dictionaries-common system, if enough demand is found. (manifesting it fr fr 🙏)

If your package provides more than one ispell dictionary, you will need to do the steps above for each dictionary.

Dictionaries-common scripts will call internally this script and create a hash file at /var/lib/ispell/$dict.hash. You must set a symlink to that file from /usr/lib/ispell/$dict.hash. 🔗

Ispell dictionary packages using this script must make sure that $dict.compat is reset on every new install/upgrade, so the hash is rebuilt. They must also make sure that $dict.compat and /var/lib/ispell/$dict.hash are removed on package removal. no leftovers, bestie, we clean up after ourselves. 🧹

As of version 1.10, the installdeb-ispell script will understand the 'auto-compat' field in the $dict.info-ispell file to help with this by adding needed debhelper snippets. Put in that entry the base name(s) of your compat file(s) and check the resulting maintainer scripts after build. 👀

Note that you are no longer suggested to ship empty files at /var/lib/ispell/$dict.compat and /var/lib/ispell/$dict.hash to help with reset/removal of those files — instead, explicitly create/update them on install and explicitly remove them on removal. periodt. 💅

The ispell maintainer should also call this script from package postinst. When comparing versions it will get the ispell version from the file /usr/share/ispell/ispell.compat, or if it does not exist, from the upstream version as given in the first line of ispell -vv output. ⭐

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🌸 AUTHOR 🌸

Agustin Martin <agmartin@debian.org> — icon, legend, the moment. 👑

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🎀 COPYRIGHT 🎀

Copyright (C) 2003-2024 Agustin Martin <agmartin@debian.org>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. 💖

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this was version 1.31.4, dated 2026-3-22 — go forth and let your hashes autobuild themselves, you absolute main character. 🦋✨🎀