feature files missing in newest fontmake

[cjdunn]

Just hit this error when building with the latest fontmake 3.9.0
Compiling UFO failed: <features>:1:8: The following feature file should be included but cannot be found: ../fea/MyFeatures.fea

I'm not sure where this got broken, but in previous versions this was not an issue. FWIW, my .ufo files are in a folder called 1-drawing and my feature file: MyFeatures.fea is in a parallel folder called fea, and in each .ufo file I have include(../fea/MyFeatures.fea); Not sure if it matters, but my designspace file myTypeface.designspace is in another parallel folder called designspace. All of these folder (1-drawing, fea, and designspace) are in the same enclosing folder. So I can't figure out where fontmake is expecting the features to be located now.

If I generate from RoboFont, my features are included without issue. Same when I preview my features using the FeaturePreview extension. I would expect fontmake to match this behavior.

This used to work in fontmake 2x, I'm not sure where this changed. This is a bug, right?

[anthrotype]

I don't think we changed anything about that recently.
I'm not sure I understood exactly your project source layout.. Maybe can you use the tree command to show what the directories and files look like?
Or ls -R to recursively list all files and directories

[cjdunn]

The structure looks like this:

sources/
├── 1-drawing
│   ├── source1.ufo
│   │   ├── features.fea
├── fea
│   ├── MyFeatures.fea 
├── designspace
│   ├── myTypeface.designspace
└── other folder

inside source1.ufo in the features.fea file I have include(../fea/MyFeatures.fea);
Currently in Robofont this works. And in previous versions of fontmake this worked. Now it doesn't not so I'm confused.

If I go back to my old venv (fontmake version 2.0) from when I last built from these sources I can generate fonts without issue. So that's what I'll do for now.

[khaledhosny]

The UFO spec specifies that includes should be relative to the UFO path not the features.fea file. You need to drop the leading ../ from the include path.

[anthrotype]

You need to drop the leading ../ from the include path.

no, the include path is correct. Notice that the source1.ufo is in turn inside a subfolder 1-drawing, which is a sibling of the fea directory where MyFeatures.fea is.
I'll try to reproduce this locally if I can and get back to you

[anthrotype]

I can not reproduce the issue using fontmake 3.9.0 and the following test file (see attached zip):

$ tree ufo_fea_include_test/
ufo_fea_include_test/
├── 1-drawing
│   └── source1.ufo
│       ├── features.fea
│       ├── fontinfo.plist
│       ├── glyphs
│       │   ├── A_.glif
│       │   ├── contents.plist
│       │   └── layerinfo.plist
│       ├── layercontents.plist
│       ├── lib.plist
│       └── metainfo.plist
├── designspace
│   └── MyTypeface.designspace
└── fea
    └── MyFeatures.fea

6 directories, 10 files

ufo_fea_include_test.zip

When I run fontmake ufo_fea_include_test/designspace/MyTypeface.designspace -o variable, it completes without error and builds the variable_ttf/MyTypeface-VF.ttf.

[cjdunn]

Thank you for sending over the test file. Hmm, your test file worked for me too in both the old and new versions of fontmake. Now I have no idea what causing the problem with my files in the newer fontmake.

When I have time I might try to make a bunch of VENVs with different versions of fontmake to see where the problem starts happening for my files.

[anthrotype]

It’d be great if you could reduce it to a minimal reproducer that could be shared in here.
Try to compare my files with yours and see if you might have missed some important difference