Problems with 'pyenchant', CentOS (& El Ca

Question

Problem Statement

I am having problems running a python file that import's the enchant library. I've installed the enchant module with the following command:

$ pip install -U pyenchant
> Requirement already up-to-date: pyenchant in /usr/lib/python3.4/site-packages

My Python Environment

$ cat /etc/*-release
CentOS Linux release 7.2.1511 (Core)

$ cat ~/.zshrc
...
export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python3.4/site-packages
alias py="python3"
alias pip="pip3"
...

$ py --version
Python 3.4.3

$ pip --version
pip 8.1.1 from /usr/lib/python3.4/site-packages (python 3.4)

$ echo $PYTHONPATH
/usr/lib/python3.4/site-packages

$ ls -al /usr/lib/python3.4/site-packages | grep enchant
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root 4096 13 apr 13:56 enchant
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 13 apr 13:56 pyenchant-1.6.6.dist-info

$ yum list installed | grep python-enchant
((nothing))

My Python File

$ cat ~/diskchall.py
import enchant

dictionary = enchant.Dict("en_US")
...

Running the file

$ py ~/diskchall.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/root/diskchall.py", line 1, in <module>
    import enchant
  File "/usr/lib/python3.4/site-packages/enchant/__init__.py", line 92, in <module>
    from enchant import _enchant as _e
  File "/usr/lib/python3.4/site-packages/enchant/_enchant.py", line 143, in <module>
    raise ImportError(msg)
ImportError: The 'enchant' C library was not found. Please install it via your OS package manager, or use a pre-built binary wheel from PyPI.

OS X El Capitan - TypeError

Did pretty much the same steps on El Capitan, but when running it gave me a TypeError.

Fixed by changing the _enchant.py file as suggested by this issue.

Pretty much a shame that this commit was from 2014 and still hasn't made the Pip repo.

Answer 1

In case you have Python 2.7 and Centos 7 (any minor version) these are the steps to install and run enchant library. 1. Install epel release for centos7, following other dependencies for enchant.

RUN rpm -Uvh ./rpms/epel-release-7-11.noarch.rpm
RUN rpm -Uvh ./rpms/hunspell-1.2.8-16.el6.x86_64.rpm
RUN rpm -Uvh ./rpms/hunspell-en-US-0.20121024-6.el7.noarch.rpm
RUN rpm -Uvh ./rpms/hunspell-1.3.2-15.el7.x86_64.rpm
RUN rpm -Uvh ./rpms/enchant-1.6.0-8.el7.x86_64.rpm
RUN rpm -Uvh ./rpms/aspell-0.60.6.1-9.el7.x86_64.rpm
RUN rpm -Uvh ./rpms/enchant-aspell-1.6.0-8.el7.x86_64.rpm
RUN rpm -Uvh ./rpms/python-enchant-1.6.5-14.el7.noarch.rpm

This will install pyenchant library with spell checker for EN (you can change it accordingly to any other language) and aspell interface for PY and hunspeller.

Answer 2

It looks like you are missing at least one dependency the 'enchant' C library. It is either called libenchant or enchant. The python module is a wrapper around this library so you need this library to use the wrapper. To see what is available try:

yum whatprovides '*enchant*'

Your command

yum list installed | grep python-enchant

will not show python-enchant as you installed it with pip not yum. Instead try:

pip freeze | grep enchant

A list of dependencies for one a build of python-enchant can be seen here note the requirement for enchant >= 1.5.0 (sometimes called libenchant)

On RedHat a simple "yum whatprovides enchant" will do:

yum whatprovides enchant
...
Repo        : rhel6-base-x86_64
...
1:enchant-1.5.0-4.el6.i686 : An Enchanting Spell Checking Library
Repo        : rhel6-base-x86_64
...
1:enchant-1.5.0-5.el6.i686 : An Enchanting Spell Checking Library
Repo        : rhel6-base-x86_64
...
1:enchant-1.5.0-5.el6.x86_64 : An Enchanting Spell Checking Library
Repo        : rhel6-base-x86_64
...

Install it with:

yum install enchant