F45 Change Proposal: LibreOffice Dictionaries (self-contained)

Project Discussion Change Proposals
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1

:link: LibreOffice Dictionaries

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Wiki
Announced

:link: Summary

Add a new libreoffice-dictionaries source package in Fedora providing hunspell spellcheck dictionaries sourced directly from the LibreOffice upstream dictionaries repository, packaged as individual per-language subpackages named libreoffice-dict-<lang>.

:link: Owner

:link: Detailed Description

The LibreOffice project maintains its own collection of hunspell dictionaries at https://github.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries, updated in sync with each LibreOffice release. These dictionaries are maintained separately from the existing hunspell-<lang> packages in Fedora and in some cases provide more up-to-date word lists.

This Change introduces the libreoffice-dictionaries source package, which builds 71 binary subpackages covering over 66 languages. Each subpackage:

  • Installs .aff and .dic hunspell dictionary files into /usr/share/hunspell/
  • Declares Conflicts: hunspell-<lang> so it does not co-install with the existing Fedora-maintained package for the same language
  • Declares Requires: hunspell-filesystem for the directory ownership dependency

Notable new additions compared to existing Fedora hunspell-* packages include:

  • Bengali (libreoffice-dict-bn_BD)
  • English regional variants split into five subpackages: libreoffice-dict-en-AU, libreoffice-dict-en-CA, libreoffice-dict-en-GB, libreoffice-dict-en-US, libreoffice-dict-en-ZA
  • Aragonese (libreoffice-dict-an), Tibetan (libreoffice-dict-bo), Bosnian (libreoffice-dict-bs), Central Kurdish (libreoffice-dict-ckb), Guarani (libreoffice-dict-gug), Kurdish (libreoffice-dict-kmr), Lao (libreoffice-dict-lo), Sanskrit (libreoffice-dict-sa)

The spec file uses embedded RPM Lua scripting to generate all subpackage definitions programmatically from a single data table, avoiding hundreds of lines of repetitive boilerplate.

:link: Feedback

:link: Benefit to Fedora

  • Users installing LibreOffice will have access to dictionaries that are versioned and tested together with each LibreOffice release, reducing spellcheck regressions caused by version skew between LibreOffice and independently-packaged dictionaries. * Provides coverage for languages and regional locales not currently available as standalone hunspell-* packages in Fedora. * The Conflicts: tagging ensures clean, unambiguous dictionary ownership — users can choose between the Fedora-maintained
hunspell-<lang>

or the LibreOffice-sourced

libreoffice-dict-<lang>

, but not both simultaneously.

:link: Scope

  • Proposal owners: Create and maintain the libreoffice-dictionaries package in Fedora.

  • Other developers: No changes required to existing hunspell-* packages. The Conflicts: tag handles coexistence cleanly.

  • Release engineering: New source package to be added to Fedora 45 dist-git. No mass rebuild required.

  • Policies and guidelines: Package follows Fedora Packaging Guidelines. Per-language SPDX licenses are declared on each subpackage. Files in /usr/share/hunspell/ are owned via the hunspell-filesystem dependency.

  • Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

  • Alignment with the Fedora Strategy:

:link: Upgrade/compatibility impact

This is a new source package with no prior presence in Fedora. No existing packages are modified. The Conflicts: relationship with existing hunspell-<lang> packages is intentional and ensures that users upgrading from a system with hunspell-fr (for example) will not inadvertently end up with conflicting dictionary files if libreoffice-dict-fr is installed.

:link: How To Test

  1. Enable Copr repo on your system using command
dnf copr enable pnemade/libreoffice-dictionaries
  1. Install any subpackage, for example:
dnf install libreoffice-dict-fr libreoffice-dict-en-GB libreoffice-dict-de
  1. Verify the dictionary files are installed:
ls /usr/share/hunspell/fr_FR.* /usr/share/hunspell/en_GB.* /usr/share/hunspell/de_DE.*
  1. Verify locale symlinks are present (e.g. for en-GB aliases):
ls -la /usr/share/hunspell/en_IE.* /usr/share/hunspell/en_IN.* /usr/share/hunspell/en_NZ.*
  1. Confirm spellcheck works in LibreOffice Writer by setting the document language to the installed locale. 6. Confirm that attempting to install both hunspell-fr and libreoffice-dict-fr simultaneously results in a conflict reported by dnf.

:link: User Experience

:link: Dependencies

:link: Contingency Plan

  • Contingency mechanism: If the package is not ready, it is simply not included in Fedora 45. No other packages depend on it yet.
  • Contingency deadline: Final freeze for Fedora 45.
  • Blocks release? No.

:link: Documentation

No documentation changes required.

:link: Release Notes

A new libreoffice-dictionaries package is available in Fedora 45, providing hunspell spell check dictionaries sourced directly from the LibreOffice upstream repository. Install individual language packages such as libreoffice-dict-fr, libreoffice-dict-de or libreoffice-dict-en-GB to enable spell checking for those languages in LibreOffice and any other application using hunspell.

Last edited by @amoloney 2026-07-13T16:08:50Z

Last edited by @amoloney 2026-07-13T16:08:50Z

2

How do you feel about the proposal as written?

  • Strongly in favor
  • In favor, with reservations
  • Neutral
  • Opposed, but could be convinced
  • Strongly opposed
0 voters

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3

This change proposal has now been submitted to FESCo with ticket [#3652](Making sure you're not a bot!) for voting.

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4

The proposal doesn’t explain how to handle things depending on the hunspell- packages. In my case, libreoffice-langpack-sv depends on hunspell-sv. Something is needed for the former to accept either the current hunspell-sv or the new libreoffice-dict-sv.

There are ways to handle this. Dependencies could be changed to have a more complex expression, the new package could provide the name of the plain hunspell-<lang> package, och a completely new abstract provide could be introduced. But unless I’m mistaken, something needs to be done, and from what I can see it is not explained in the proposal what should be done.

5

Thank you for looking into this proposal. I have updated it now. Please check Changes/LibreOfficeDictionaries - Fedora Project Wiki section note at the top which provides information on how to install new libreoffice-dict-sv package.

1 Like
6

This change has been accepted by FESCo for Fedora Linux 45. A full list of approved changes to date can be found on the [Change Set Page](Releases/45/ChangeSet - Fedora Project Wiki).

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