Re: Fonts Packaging
Sourav Basu wrote:
Hello,
I wanted to start contributing to the Fedora project by starting to
package fonts as I heard its the best and easiest way to start. But
there's too much of documentation that gets confusing. I don't know which
commands to use and how to build. Can you help me out please?
In addition to the documentation on the wiki that Akira has pointed you
to, I'd have to say a few things.
1. You can't get away without quite a lot of reading. In addition to the
wiki, take a look at recent and some older font reviews in bugzilla. That
way you'll get an idea of typical mistakes, and you'll avoid them.
2. Packaging fonts is only the easiest way to start if you just want to
package fonts. A lot of work has gone into making a set of rpm macros that
make our font packages *consistent* but, for a beginner, that just means
that font specs (the scripts that control the rpm build) are very far from
being a good starting model for understanding the general software build
process. So, to understand the normal build process, you'd perhaps be
better off looking at how some smaller command line tools are built.
3. The people in Fedora's Fonts SIG would love to have people on board who
are willing to make a contribution to improving the range and quality of
fonts and font tools in the distribution. We've had plenty of people who
decide that packaging two fonts to get them sponsored will look good on
their CV, and then they don't maintain them, or even stealthily drop them
after sponsorship. That doesn't help.
4. Despite having the font packaging macros, fonts can be a pain in the
bum to package because they are typically have several flaws in the
upstream archive: (a) poor version control (b) poor metadata (c) poor
licensing, and the job of the maintainer will be to encourage upstream to
correct these things.
Although I have no wish to discourage you from starting in this way, the
very best way to start packaging is to either find some software that you
think should be in the distribution and package it, or to submit patches
to software that you use, with an aim to becoming a co-maintainer. Either
of those starting points will ensure that you are working on something you
*use*, and you'll be with us longer.
--
Paul Flo Williams