util-linux look searches for /usr/share/dict/words which does not exist

[vrthra]

Issue description

The look program should look up words in the system dictionary, which either should be present at /usr/share/dict/words or another location.

Steps to reproduce

$ look help
look: /usr/share/dict/words: No such file or directory
zsh: exit 1     look help

Technical details

• System:

$ nixos-version
16.03.909.f199be0 (Emu)

• Nix version:

$ nix-env --version
nix-env (Nix) 1.11.2

• Nixpkgs version:

$ nix-instantiate --eval '' -A lib.nixpkgsVersion
"16.03.909.f199be0"

$ nix-instantiate --eval ~/Development/nixpkgs -A lib.nixpkgsVersion
"16.09pre-git"

[rnhmjoj]

Is there any package providing the words file?

[vrthra]

Not sure if a package in Nix provides it. In ubuntu, it is provided thus

[ryantm]

It doesn't look like any package is specifically providing it. Maybe we should package the words package as described in the Arch User Repository ( https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/tree/trunk/PKGBUILD?h=packages/words ) and add it as a dependency on util-linux

[nixy]

I might take a swing at packaging words but this would also require patching util-linux to make look use the dictionaries from the package. Not sure if I know how that would be done.

[matthewbauer]

It looks like nixpkgs.scowl provides this list for us. But, I don't think we want to put it in everyone's closure. Instead, I think we can make a NixOS module using the WORDLIST env var

[stale]

Thank you for your contributions.
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[mixmixmix]

still important to me. After installing scowl I can access the list in the store /nix/store/bp5qlbs8fih1p84kxgf0xn87csayjahw-scowl-2019.10.06/share/dict but this is hardly sufficient in the long run.

[OmnipotentEntity]

It seems like my PR is in the final stages of review. If anyone has any good suggestions for it, please let me know!

[OmnipotentEntity]

#158034 has been merged 🥳

To use it simply set environment.wordlist.enable = true in your configuration.nix. The default is sane. It sets the $WORDLIST variable (which is used by look by default) to the default wordlist in the scowl package, which as mentioned upthread is the wordlist package used in many popular distributions by default.

As far as I am aware, this is everything needed to finally put this issue to bed, so I'm going to close this issue. Special thanks to @pennae and the rest of the folken in the NixOS Dev Matrix Chat for guiding me through the process of making my first module. Thanks to @rissson for giving me a review. And thanks @Synthetica9 for the merge.