How to create a reusable check-spelling action complete with configuration files

[ricardo-dematos]

I'm trying to create a wrapper to check-spelling/check-spelling , with the intention of simplifying the inputs and outputs, while also providing a set of words valid in the Valispace software context.

It resides in valispace/actions/check-spelling, along with the Configuration: Files.

The main workflow has :

- uses: valispace/actions/check-spelling@master
  with:
    event_aliases: '{ "schedule": "push" }'
    only_check_changed_files: '0'

The action is :

runs:
  using: composite
  steps:
    - id: spelling
      uses: check-spelling/check-spelling@v0.0.21
      with:
        event_aliases: '${{ inputs.event_aliases }}'
        only_check_changed_files: '${{ inputs.only_check_changed_files }}'
        post_comment: '0'
        config: '.'
        extra_dictionaries:
          cspell:en_GB/src/wordsEnGb.txt
          cspell:en_GB/src/additional_words.txt
          cspell:en_US/src/en_US.txt
          cspell:en_US/src/additional_words.txt
          cspell:en_US/src/contractions-and-possessives.txt
          cspell:en_US/src/hyphenated-words.txt
          cspell:pt_PT/Portuguese-European.txt
          cspell:software-terms/src/software-terms.txt
          cspell:software-terms/src/software-tools.txt
          cspell:software-terms/src/network-protocols.txt
          cspell:software-terms/src/network-os.txt
          cspell:cryptocurrencies/cryptocurrencies.txt
          cspell:public-licenses/src/generated/public-licenses.txt
          cspell:public-licenses/src/additional-licenses.txt
          cspell:lorem-ipsum/dictionary.txt
          cspell:mnemonics/src/mnemonics.txt
          cspell:companies/src/companies.txt
          cspell:aws/aws.txt
          cspell:docker/src/docker-words.txt
          cspell:bash/bash-words.txt
          cspell:fullstack/fullstack.txt
          cspell:django/django.txt
          cspell:django/requirements.txt
          cspell:node/additional_words.txt
          cspell:node/node.txt
          cspell:node/src/node-old.txt
          cspell:npm/npm.txt
          cspell:python/src/python/python.txt
          cspell:python/src/python/python-lib.txt
          cspell:python/src/common/extra.txt
          cspell:python/src/additional_words.txt
          cspell:typescript/typescript.txt
          cspell:html/html.txt
          cspell:html-symbol-entities/entities.txt
          cspell:css/css.txt
          cspell:fonts/fonts.txt
          cspell:filetypes/filetypes.txt

This configuration does not read the Configuration: Files!

I've tried in the valispace/actions/check-spelling action :

• changing setting config to './check-spelling'
• replacing setting config with just spell_check_this: 'valispace/actions/check-spelling@master'
• create symbolic links from valispace/actions/check-spelling/.github/actions/spelling to valispace/actions/check-spelling for the Configuration: Files

None of this worked.

How can I make this work? 🧐

---

👉 In logs it seems that check-spelling/check-spelling is only capturing valispace/actions from setting spell_check_this: 'valispace/actions/check-spelling@master'.

[BenedekFarkas]

Hey @ricardo-dematos we've got both an action a workflow set up as a wrapper, please check out https://github.com/Lombiq/GitHub-Actions/blob/dev/Docs/Workflows.md#spelling-workflow!

[jsoref]

I'd generally add debug: 1 and just read to see what it's doing.

Do you have an action run I could look through?

[ricardo-dematos]

Hey @ricardo-dematos we've got both an action a workflow set up as a wrapper, please check out https://github.com/Lombiq/GitHub-Actions/blob/dev/Docs/Workflows.md#spelling-workflow!

@BenedekFarkas your workflow uses the check-spelling action from the same repo, right?

In my case I have a public repo with the check-spelling action and the idea is to use it from other organization repo's, thus sharing the dictionaries/configuration.

Cloning the check-spelling action across the organization repo's does work, like you have experienced, but it's a dumb solution, because I'm repeating the dictionaries/configurations in each organization repo.

[BenedekFarkas]

@ricardo-dematos yes, so our https://github.com/Lombiq/GitHub-Actions/blob/dev/.github/actions/spelling/action.yml action is a wrapper for https://github.com/check-spelling/check-spelling/blob/main/action.yml with some extras to increase reusability of our base configuration in other repositories of ours:

• When the repository that we run the spell-checking on has its own configuration files, but not an advice.md, then we copy advice.md from https://github.com/Lombiq/GitHub-Actions that is a link to our own set of guidelines for maintaining the spell-checking configuration of a given repository.
• Optionally merge/copy configuration files from https://github.com/Lombiq/GitHub-Actions to the repo under spell-checking, such as excludes.txt, line_forbidden.patterns and patterns.txt.
• A few general-purpose dictionary files that you can optionally add to spell-checking.
• The ability to extend/override the general-purpose configuration source prefixes and list of dictionary files that we defined in the wrapper action.

For example, our Open-Source Orchard Core Extensions repository runs spell-checking in its Build and Test workflow and even though it doesn't have its own patterns.txt file, it will "inherit" https://github.com/Lombiq/GitHub-Actions/blob/dev/.github/actions/spelling/patterns.txt.

Also, it has an excludes.txt file that will be extended with the entries from https://github.com/Lombiq/GitHub-Actions/blob/dev/.github/actions/spelling/excludes.txt.