Jinx not finding installed libraries on NixOS

[thibautbenjamin]

Hi, first of all thank you for the great work, I have been using and very much enjoying jinx for quite some time.

However, I have recently started using NixOS, and I cannot get jinx working on there. I don't really know what's wrong, as it seems to work for other people, but for some reason, during startup, I get the following message:

Jinx: No dictionaries available for "en_GB fr_FR"

I am using the jinx package provided by nix, I have the dictionaries installed in nix, the recommended way, adding the following lines to my configuration:

  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    (aspellWithDicts
      (dicts: with dicts; [ fr en en-computers en-science ]))
  ];

I could also check, installing the enchant package, that the dictionaries were detected:

❯ enchant-lsmod-2 -list-dicts
en (aspell)
en-variant_0 (aspell)
en-variant_1 (aspell)
en-variant_2 (aspell)
en-w_accents (aspell)
en-wo_accents (aspell)
en_AU (aspell)
en_AU-variant_0 (aspell)
en_AU-variant_1 (aspell)
en_AU-w_accents (aspell)
en_AU-wo_accents (aspell)
en_CA (aspell)
en_CA-variant_0 (aspell)
en_CA-variant_1 (aspell)
en_CA-w_accents (aspell)
en_CA-wo_accents (aspell)
en_GB (aspell)
en_GB-ise (aspell)
en_GB-ise-w_accents (aspell)
en_GB-ise-wo_accents (aspell)
en_GB-ize (aspell)
en_GB-ize-w_accents (aspell)
en_GB-ize-wo_accents (aspell)
en_GB-variant_0 (aspell)
en_GB-variant_1 (aspell)
en_GB-w_accents (aspell)
en_GB-wo_accents (aspell)
en_US (aspell)
en_US-variant_0 (aspell)
en_US-variant_1 (aspell)
en_US-w_accents (aspell)
en_US-wo_accents (aspell)
fr (aspell)
fr-40 (aspell)
fr-60 (aspell)
fr-80 (aspell)
fr-lrg (aspell)
fr-med (aspell)
fr-sml (aspell)
fr_CH (aspell)
fr_CH-40 (aspell)
fr_CH-60 (aspell)
fr_CH-80 (aspell)
fr_CH-lrg (aspell)
fr_CH-med (aspell)
fr_CH-sml (aspell)
fr_FR (aspell)
fr_FR-40 (aspell)
fr_FR-60 (aspell)
fr_FR-80 (aspell)
fr_FR-lrg (aspell)
fr_FR-med (aspell)
fr_FR-sml (aspell)
he (hspell)
he_IL (hspell)

However, it seems that jinx does not see these dictionaries, as when I evaluate (mapcar #'jinx--mod-dict (ensure-list "en_US")), I get (nil).

The package seems to be working for everyone else, so I must be doing something wrong, but I don't know what.

Any help for debugging the situation would be greatly appreciated!

[fbergroth]

I was facing the same issue. Enchant is usingt the aspell package directly and not the wrapper created by aspellWithDicts.

I fixed it by just setting:

home.sessionVariables.ASPELL_CONF = "dict-dir ${pkgs.aspellWithDicts (ds: with ds; [en sv])}/lib/aspell";

[thibautbenjamin]

Hi, thanks for your help, this works when lauching from terminal, but not when launching from the app launcher

[alanpearce]

I fixed it by not using aspell; nuspell seems to work much better without any configuration, probably hunspell would be the same (they both use hunspell dictionaries). I didn't even need to use nuspellWithDicts. This is important (for me) because I was running into the issue where opening Emacs from the desktop environment (either Plasma6 or macOS) wouldn't load dictionaries, but if I launched it from a shell, it would (due to the ASPELL_CONF variable)

The Enchant docs make it sound like nuspell and hunspell are more modern than aspell.

Add to home.packages or environment.systemPackages:

with pkgs.hunspellDicts; [
  # whatever
]

Dictionary packages are in <nixpkgs/pkgs/development/libraries/hunspell/dictionaries.nix>

Currently I have this in an overlay:

  enchant =
    let
      file = builtins.fetchurl {
        url = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alanpearce/nixpkgs/7ee75d6aa9b088922b47b69c1912b2afe000ae52/pkgs/development/libraries/enchant/2.x.nix";
        sha256 = "1y7h3fvp7ghcfb5v3h6riiv7z2bzgnxm0p696bbhfb0gwwv9q8aw";
      };
    in
    super.callPackage file {
      withHspell = false;
      withAspell = false;

      inherit (super.darwin.apple_sdk.frameworks) Cocoa;
    };

This will also enable AppleSpell on Darwin.

After NixOS/nixpkgs#310613 lands (track PR), this overlay can be reduced to super.enchant.override { withAspell = false; withHspell = false; }

[thibautbenjamin]

Hi, thanks a lot,

I am fairly new to nixOS, so I am not exactly sure how to use the overlays yet. For now I am using the session variable solution since it works well when launching emacs through the terminal. I might investigate using nuspell later, to have it working when launching emacs from an app launcher.

I'll mark your solution as an answer because it seems more complete, even though I have not tested it.