update-fonts-dir(8)

💖 NAME 💖

okay bestie, this is update-fonts-dir(8) from the System Manager's Manual, and it is so iconic for keeping X font folders tidy ✨

update-fonts-dir - compile fonts.dir files 🎀

🧚 SYNOPSIS 🧚

update-fonts-dir [OPTION] directory ...

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so update-fonts-dir makes a fonts.dir file inside an X font directory by calling mkfontdir(1x) with the right arguments 💅 it's basically only run from the post-installation and post-removal scripts of a package that ships fonts for the X Window System, but you can totally run it whenever you want to rebuild fonts.dir files 🫶 for each directory (which is just the last part of its path, like 75dpi or misc), it generates either /usr/lib/X11/fonts/directory/fonts.dir or /usr/share/fonts/X11/directory/fonts.dir from the fonts.scale file and the font files sitting in there ✨

this is the glow-up part: multiple packages can give names to fonts in the same directory 🦋 no font package actually ships the fonts.dir file in the X font directory itself, so nobody can accidentally overwrite another package's font names. no drama, no cap 👑

for example, say the two packages xfonts-base (real) and xfonts-nifty (hypothetical) both install fonts into /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc. update-fonts-dir makes sure the fonts.dir file in that folder knows about the font files from both packages 🥹

the format of fonts.dir files is explained in the mkfontdir(1x) manual page 📖

there's also an example of how to use update-fonts-dir in package maintainer scripts in the Debian Policy Manual 💜

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -h, --help — shows a quick usage message and then bounces 👋
• -7, --x11r7-layout — switches to the layout introduced in X11R7, so fonts go in /usr/share/fonts/X11/directory instead of the default /usr/lib/X11/fonts/directory 🌈

🫧 OPERANDS 🫧

update-fonts-dir wants one or more X font directory names as operands 🍓 only the final path component should be used. so this is the correct way:

update-fonts-dir 75dpi

but update-fonts-dir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi and update-fonts-dir /usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi are a no from me 🙅‍♀️

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• COLUMNS — this tells the program how wide the terminal is, in character cells, so diagnostic messages line up nicely 💅 if it isn't set, the terminal gets asked using stty(1) to figure out its width. if that doesn't work either, it assumes 80 🙈

🚨 DIAGNOSTICS 🚨

❌ Errors

• usage error: one or more font directories must be provided — you ran update-fonts-dir with no operands 😭 give it one or more X font directory names to work on
• usage error: unrecognized option — you passed an option it doesn't know 💀 only use the options listed in "OPTIONS" above
• fatal error: path to X font directory must be used — you gave a directory name that isn't an X font directory name 🥀 only supply X font directory names

⚠️ Warnings

warning: absolute path directory was provided — using absolute paths is deprecated, so please just use the final component of the X font directory name 🫠

• warning: directory does not exist or is not a directory — that directory isn't valid, so update-fonts-dir skipped it 🙈

🏁 EXIT STATUS 🏁

• 0 — update-fonts-dir ran successfully ✨
• 1 — update-fonts-dir hit a fatal error. check the diagnostic messages section above 💀
• 2 — update-fonts-dir was called with invalid arguments 🙅‍♀️

🐛 BUGS 🐛

bugs are tracked in the Debian Bug Tracking System at https://bugs.debian.org/xfonts-utils 🔍 if you want to report a bug in update-fonts-dir, check /usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt or the reportbug(1) command 💌

👩‍💻 AUTHOR 👩‍💻

update-fonts-dir was written by Branden Robinson. legend 👑

🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

• mkfontdir(1x) 📚

bestie, that's the whole page 🫶 Debian Project, 2004-11-11, update-fonts-dir(8) 💜🦋