Re: [PATCH] Add Fedora location of DejaVu SANS font

[Nicholas Vinson]

On 12/8/21 12:58, Robbie Harwood wrote:
> Nicholas Vinson <nvinson234@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > On 12/7/21 15:04, Robbie Harwood wrote:
> > > Nicholas Vinson <nvinson234@gmail.com> writes:
> > >
> > > > Wouldn't it be better to modify configure.ac so the location could
> > > > be passed in instead of having one-off patches for alternate
> > > > locations?  Something like
> > > > --with-dejavu-font=/usr/share/fonts/dejavu-sans-fonts?
> > >
> > > That would mean that anyone using grub2 that wants the dejavu fonts
> > > will have to figure out that the option exists and pass it to the
> > > buildscripts.  That's a pretty bad user experience for anyone
> > > building their own grub.
> >
> > On the contrary, it doesn't have to mean that at all. It could mean
> > that when a path is given, configure would use the provided path;
> > otherwise, it falls back to its default list to find the font.
>
> But then we still have to keep the default list... and I'd still be here
> as a distro maintainer wanting my distro's path in the default list.  I
> don't see how this is any better.

And you want it in the default path because? Most likely because you're 
patching configure or using tools like sed or awk to change configure or 
Makefile to use your path? You know that approach is brittle and you 
want something better.

Adding your distro's choice location to a pre-defined list works until 
the distro changes where it stores the font. At that point you are back 
where you started. Manually patching GRUB until a version of GRUB is 
released with your new path in the list.

The same is true with any other distro that uses a location not in the 
list. The approach you're suggesting is that submit a patch, get GRUB 
updated.

What I am asking for puts an end to that. Once the flag is in place, the 
builder can pick whatever path is desirable, pass it into the configure 
script, and have GRUB builds.  No need to craft a patch, send it to the 
mailing list, and wait for the update to make it into a GRUB release.

> > Such an approach would mimic configure's current behavior for values
> > such as bootdir and grubdir.
>
> But those are *install* paths, not *detection* paths.  We're not
> installing the font - we're figuring out where it is on the system.

In the context of building GRUB, bootdir and grubdir are *not* 
installation directories. They are simply default paths that get written 
into the built code.

Furthermore, autotools makes no distinction between such paths. The 
approach used to handle both types in configure.ac is the same.

> > > I get that maintaining a list of where everyone has put their fonts is
> > > somewhat obnoxious, but in the absence of a standard way of doing it,
> > > I'm not sure there's anything better.  The only other alternative I
> >
> > See above and configure.ac's solutions to similar issues for better
> > approaches.
>
> configure.ac is 2189 lines of code.  You're going to have to be more
> specific :)

Effort is often times its own reward. I would not want to deprive you of it.

Regards,
Nicholas Vinson

> Be well,
> --Robbie