Hack is compiled from UFO v2 spec source files to ttf, woff, and woff2 fonts with free, open source build tools. You can either install the tools manually or use the automated build dependency installation approach documented below.
To build the Hack desktop fonts (ttf) from source you will need the following build dependencies:
- fontmake Python executable
- fonttools Python library
- ttfautohint executable (includes Harfbuzz and FreeType dependencies)
To build the Hack web fonts from source you will need all of the build dependencies listed above for desktop font builds. In addition you will need the following dependencies for the web font build steps:
- sfnt2woff-zopfli C++ executable
- woff2_compress C++ executable
Install all build dependencies for desktop and web fonts with the following make command:
$ make build-with-dependencies
This will install all necessary build dependencies and complete a build of all desktop and web fonts.
After the build dependencies are installed, use make targets from the root of the Hack repository to build font sets.
$ make
$ make ttf
$ make webfonts
$ make woff
$ make woff2
$ make subsets
Desktop fonts are available on the path build/ttf from the root of the repository upon completion of your build.
Web fonts are available on the path build/web/fonts from the root of the repository upon completion of your build.
All build dependencies installed with the automated approaches can be uninstalled with the following commands:
$ pip uninstall fontmake
$ pip uninstall fonttools
$ rm -rf ~/ttfautohint-build
$ rm -rf ~/sfnt2woff-zopfli-build
$ rm -rf ~/woff2
Here are all of the above commands in a single line that can be copied/pasted into your terminal to accomplish the entire uninstall process:
$ pip uninstall fontmake && pip uninstall fonttools && rm -rf ~/ttfautohint-build && rm -rf ~/sfnt2woff-zopfli-build && rm -rf ~/woff2
In cases where a compile did not proceed to completion (e.g. you intentionally exited early or an exception was raised) a temporary directory may still exist in the root of the repository on the path master_ttf. This can be removed with:
$ rm -rf master_ttf
fontmake and fonttools are Python packages and are uninstalled with pip.
The FreeType library (including its build dependency Harfbuzz), ttfautohint, sfnt2woff-zopfli, and woff2 are built in directories on your $HOME path. They are not installed on your $PATH (unless of course you have defined $HOME on $PATH) so they will not work from the command line with the name of the executable file only (e.g. $ ttfautohint [file path]). This is intentional.
Repeat execution of the build process cleans up the temporary directory master_ttf if found so this step is not mandatory to repeat a build and should not lead to errors with the build.