bug: fontconfig via HM doesn't actually work for me (HM installed fonts not seen by applications)

ppenguin commented 1 year ago

Are you following the right branch?

[X] My Nixpkgs and Home Manager versions are in sync

Is there an existing issue for this?

[X] I have searched the existing issues

Issue description

I just moved the many "extra" fonts for my HM user from the global nixos config into my HM-config.

So I have:

home.packages = with pkgs; [ ... /* many fonts */ ];
fonts.fontconfig.enable = true;

When e.g. running font-manager I can only see the fonts that were installed system wide (via fonts = [ ... ]; in configuration.nix.

Running fc-cache --force --verbose gives me many errors about "looped dirs" (safe to ignore as duplicates?) and non-writable cache dir(s). The latter is to be expected if I understand correctly, since the cache is read-only by design and built to the nix store by the HM module. So fc-cache is ineffectual as well by design for this setup, I guess.

I checked and have ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/10-hm-fonts.conf, containing

<?xml version='1.0'?>

<!-- Generated by Home Manager. -->

<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
  <include ignore_missing="yes">/nix/store/8563zkq3iw1k9l3l4a1544xs6nskglzk-home-manager-path/etc/fonts/conf.d</include>
  <include ignore_missing="yes">/nix/store/8563zkq3iw1k9l3l4a1544xs6nskglzk-home-manager-path/etc/fonts/fonts.conf</include>

  <dir>/nix/store/8563zkq3iw1k9l3l4a1544xs6nskglzk-home-manager-path/lib/X11/fonts</dir>
  <dir>/nix/store/8563zkq3iw1k9l3l4a1544xs6nskglzk-home-manager-path/share/fonts</dir>
  <dir>/home/jeroen/.nix-profile/lib/X11/fonts</dir>
  <dir>/home/jeroen/.nix-profile/share/fonts</dir>

  <cachedir>/nix/store/8563zkq3iw1k9l3l4a1544xs6nskglzk-home-manager-path/lib/fontconfig/cache</cachedir>
</fontconfig>

The first <include> appears to be the same one that is pointed to by ~/.nix-profile/etc/fonts/conf.d, the second doesn't exist (?!), the second and fourth <dir> entries are also the same /nix/store path content and the X11 don't exist (I'm on wayland, probably normal).

I also have ~/.nix-profile/etc/fonts/ which only contains a dir conf.d which contains symlinks (e.g. 30-courier-new.conf) to the nix store realisations of corefonts and vistafonts, which I do have in home.packages, but I have many more fonts as well but these are the only ones that are linked here.

When I run a devShell from a flake that does this:

  ...
  let
       fonts = pkgs.makeFontsConf { fontDirectories = with pkgs; [ freefont_ttf fira fira-mono ubuntu_font_family noto-fonts-cjk gyre-fonts hyperscrypt-font lmodern ]; }; # https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/24485
  in
  pkgs.mkShell { 
   ...
    shellHook = ''
    export FONTCONFIG_FILE=${fonts}
  '';
  }

and in this shell start font-manager, I indeed see the selected fonts.

I.e. that begs the question what HM does differently, or why we can't use makeFontsConf in HM as well?

So I'm a bit lost why HM fonts management doesn't work for me, but also it might be better to use the same fonts = [ ... ]; paradigm in HM instead of just putting fonts in home.packages?

Maintainer CC

@rycee

System information

- system: `"x86_64-linux"`
 - host os: `Linux 6.2.16, NixOS, 23.05 (Stoat), 23.05.20230531.3a70dd9`
 - multi-user?: `yes`
 - sandbox: `relaxed`
 - version: `nix-env (Nix) 2.13.3`
 - nixpkgs: `/nix/store/bcwv054bxj0k

nixos-discourse commented 1 year ago

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/since-upgrade-to-23-05-nerdfonts-wont-show/28636/5

rycee commented 1 year ago

Does the generated configuration show up when you run fc-conflist | grep $HOME? Do any of the fonts show up in fc-list?

exzombie commented 1 year ago

For me, it's even stranger: the ~/.nix-profile/etc/fonts/ directory doesn't exist either. fc-conflist does include /.config/fontconfig/conf.d/10-hm-fonts.conf.

The directory ~/.nix-profile/share/fonts/ exists and the fonts are installed there; fc-list includes the fonts installed by HM, and fc-match can match them. However, other programs are hit or miss. font-manager, for example, doesn't list them.

exzombie commented 1 year ago

Ok, so I tracked the "hit or miss" nature of the problem down to "Hack Nerd Font Mono", which seems to be a bit problematic. For example, it couldn't be loaded by emacs. I tried other Nerd fonts, and they work. Also in other programs, like konsole or libreoffice.

font-manager still doesn't see any Nerd fonts installed by HM. Not a problem for me, though it might indicate not everything is peachy. But it just as well be an issue specific to this program.

stale[bot] commented 10 months ago

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fedor-ivn commented 4 months ago

Any updates here? Still reproducible

stale[bot] commented 1 month ago