Missing a font

[Petter Adsen]

On Tue, 21 Apr 2015 10:13:08 +0200
"Ralf Mardorf" <ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 21 Apr 2015 09:36:20 +0200, Petter Adsen <petter at synth.no>
> wrote:
> > AFAIK, all distros reserve /usr/local for local modifications. It
> > has always been done this way on *nix systems. Your package manager
> > maintains the /usr tree, except /usr/local, and can/will thus
> > overwrite or remove changes you make on updates. Modifications you
> > make should either go in there or under your home directory.
> > ~/.local/share/fonts would probably work, if you are only setting
> > it up for yourself.
> 
> That's a half-truth. Stuff that's installed by the admin and that
> isn't part of a package, shouldn't be touched and even config files,  
> mirror-lists etc. never should be overwritten or removed.
> For example
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacnew_and_Pacsave_files. It's
> the same for modules build with e.g. dkms and, surprise, for fonts
> that are installed to the pool of fonts and that's true for e.g.
> Debian and Ubuntu too.
> 
> I prefer usage of /usr/local, because it's easier for me to stay on
> top of things, however, using a sane package management installing a
> font to /usr/ instead of /usr/local/ never ever will cause issues.
> JFTR a sane package management allows users to build packages on
> their own, without profound knowledge of rocket science, so another
> solution would be building a package for those fonts.
> 
> Btw. the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard always is in progress, so "It
> has always been done this way on *nix systems" regarding
> recommendations how to handle the FHS are questionable. I don't know

OK, I agree with you on this. It's the way I've "grown up" with doing
things, which is mostly why I wrote it that way. Mea culpa.

> how most GUIs for installing font's handle it nowadays, since I don't
> use them, but I remember a few years back, some installed fonts to
> the same tree, where the packages installed the fonts. Having just
> one directory tree, one pool for the fonts IMO is better than to
> scatter fonts to different locations. And placing fonts to $HOME
> seldom makes sense.

On this I sort of agree with you, but not entirely.

Installing local modifications in /usr/local has it's advantages. It is
easy to replicate all your changes/additions to another machine, or to
preserve them across a reinstall. In my mind, it is easier to tar
up /usr/local and extract it on the recipient system than it is to
handpick out stuff you have placed directly under /usr. This is just
how _I personally_ prefer to do things, YMMV.

The same argument goes for placing fonts under /home, which is what
some GUI font management tools do. If you are only installing them
for one user and not system-wide, I don't really see a big problem
with it. _Should_ fonts be placed under /home? I don't feel strongly
about it either way.

Petter

-- 
"I'm ionized"
"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive."
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