Subject: Re: bug#79477: Emacs Emacs 31.0.50: ispell-tests.el: "Can't find Hunspell dictionary with a \.aff affix file"

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2025 17:20:12 +0300

> Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2025 13:52:58 +0000
> From: Alan Mackenzie <[email-masked]>
> 
> Hello, Emacs.
> 
> When I run the test suite with make check, I get 25 successes in
> test/lisp/textmode/ispell-tests/ispell-tests.log.  Each of these has the
> same error message, "Can't find Hunspell dictionary with a .aff affix
> file".
> 
> I don't know what a .aff file is, but it seems like my setup is missing
> one.  Despite this, surely ispell-tests.el should cope with this
> deficiency, rather than emitting 25 error messages.

Are you saying that you have the Hunspell executable, but not its
dictionaries?  What happens if you invoke Hunspell from the shell
prompt -- does it work or does it show some error message?

If your Hunspell installation is workable, you should have a
/usr/share/hunspell directory with *.aff files.  If they are missing,
either install them or remove the Hunspell executable.  The Emacs test
suite is not supposed to cope with installations that don't work, so
showing error messages is OK in that case.

If all of the above doesn't resolve your problem, please show the
exact error messages, with everything else that the test displays
(which you should have done in the first place, of course).

FWIW, I've just tried renaming the Hunspell executable, and the test
suite correctly skipped the relevant ispell tests.  So if Hunspell is
not installed, I don't expect any error messages.