[Debian-hebrew-package] Bug#322007: aspell-he: Please autobuild dictionary hash at install time

[Brian Nelson]

Package: aspell-he
Severity: wishlist

As of aspell >= 0.60.3-3 in conjunction with dictionaries-common >=
0.49.2, aspell now fully supports building dictionary hashes at install
time.  This provides two huge advantages over packaging the hashes in
the .deb:

1. The dictionary packages may be Arch: all, which for some dictionaries
   provides a significant relief to the mirrors.

2. The hashes will be automatically rebuilt for new aspell versions if
   the dictionary format changes, eliminating the need to transition all
   dictionary packages.

Consequently, this is now the preferred method for packaging aspell
dictionaries.


Packaging autobuilt dictionaries for aspell >= 0.60.3-3
---------------------------------------------

1. Change "Provides: aspell6-dictionary" to "Provides:
   aspell-dictionary" (no version in name).

2. Remove build-dependency on aspell(-bin)

3. Change Architecture to "all"

4. Add binary package dependency on "aspell (>= 0.60.3-3)"

5. Remove any relationship on libaspell15 or aspell-bin

6. Package an empty file /var/lib/aspell/$DICT_LANG.compat (where
   $DICT_LANG is the iso code for the dictionary, e.g. "en")

7. Install the wordlists compressed as .mwl.gz, .wl.gz, or .cwl.gz to
   /usr/share/aspell.

8. For each of the above wordlists:

   a. Package an empty file /var/lib/aspell/$WORDLIST.rws (where
      $WORDLIST is the wordlist filename minus the .*wl.gz extension)

   b. Add a symlink /usr/lib/aspell/$WORDLIST.rws ->
      /var/lib/aspell/$WORDLIST.rws

   c. Append the $WORDLIST to the file
      "/usr/share/aspell/$DICT_LANG/.contents".  The .contents file
      should contain one $WORDLIST per line.

9. Add a postinst call to "/usr/sbin/update-dictcommon-aspell"--the
   easiest way to do this is to build-depend on dictionaries-common-dev
   (>= 0.9.1) and run installdeb-aspell from debian/rules.

For some examples, see aspell-en (for dictionaries based on
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/dict tarballs) or aspell-es (for
dictionaries based on plain wordlists).

If the dictionary is packaged correctly, you should see something like:

Setting up aspell-en (6.0-0-5) ...
aspell-autobuildhash: processing: en [en-common]
aspell-autobuildhash: processing: en [en-variant_0]
aspell-autobuildhash: processing: en [en-variant_1]
aspell-autobuildhash: processing: en [en-variant_2]
aspell-autobuildhash: processing: en [en_CA-w_accents-only]
aspell-autobuildhash: processing: en [en_CA-wo_accents-only]
aspell-autobuildhash: processing: en [en_GB-ise-w_accents-only]
aspell-autobuildhash: processing: en [en_GB-ise-wo_accents-only]
aspell-autobuildhash: processing: en [en_GB-ize-w_accents-only]
aspell-autobuildhash: processing: en [en_GB-ize-wo_accents-only]
aspell-autobuildhash: processing: en [en_US-w_accents-only]
aspell-autobuildhash: processing: en [en_US-wo_accents-only]

when installing.  The dictionary should then work the same as before.


Please send any questions to the dict-common-dev at lists.alioth.debian.org
mailing list.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.12.2
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)