Allow environment variable use in dictionary definitions

[JonZeolla]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I am using cspell in a github action, and I would like to allow repositories that use the action to provide a custom dictionary in addition to the dictionaries that the action provides.

Describe the solution you'd like
I would like the ability to use environment variables in a dictionary definition path.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Attempted a partial workaround using ~, but that expands to the $HOME for the root user (/root), but we need the runner home dir. Using ~runner resulted in /rootrunner.

I also attempted to glob the directories that change per-github action user in the dictionary definition (with a hard coded home directory due to the above issue) via /home/runner/work/*/*/.github/etc/dictionary.txt and received the following:

Dictionary Error with (per-repository dictionary) Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/runner/work/*/*/.github/etc/dictionary.txt'

Note that dictionary.txt is anticipated to be in ${GITHUB_WORKSPACE}/.github/etc/dictionary.txt during the GitHub actions run. I was able to confirm that this file did exist there as expected during my testing; I have avoided any workarounds using symlinks so far.

Additional context
packages/cspell-lib/src/util/resolveFile.ts appears to have very specific support for ^~ only, which uses $HOME and is the closest support to this request that I could find.

[Jason3S]

@JonZeolla,

Thank you for the suggestion.

I can see how using environment variables might be useful.

I am assuming you are using a cspell.json file in your repository to define the dictionary.

Things to note:

• relative paths are ok: ~/../home/runner/ would result in /home/runner/ assuming $HOME is /root
• You can always set the $HOME environment variable to point where you like in the github action before calling cspell.
• By default, paths starting with ./ are relative to the cspell.json file they are defined in.

[Jason3S]

I took a quick look at your pull request.

I see that the cspell config file is part of the action and not part of the repository. In that case relative path won't exactly work.

You can also use a cspell.config.js file instead of a .json file.

'use strict';

/** @type { import("@cspell/cspell-types").CSpellUserSettings } */
const cspell = {
    description: 'Example config using environment variables.',
    dictionaryDefinitions: [
        {
            name: 'repo-dict',
            path: `${process.env['GITHUB_WORKSPACE']}/.github/etc/dictionary.txt`,
        },
    ],
    dictionaries: ['repo-dict'],
};

module.exports = cspell;

[JonZeolla]

Thank you, I will take a stab at moving to cspell.config.js and report back.

[JonZeolla]

That worked wonderfully. Thank you!

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