How to install fonts to chiseled images

[tri-bao]

I'm converting our 6.0.35-jammy distro-based runtime images to distroless 6.0.35-jammy-chiseled images. I need fonts in the runtime. In the distro-based image, they are installed as following

RUN DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive \
         echo "ttf-mscorefonts-installer msttcorefonts/accepted-mscorefonts-eula select true" | debconf-set-selections \
    && apt-get update \
    && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
      libfontconfig1 \
      fontconfig \
      fonts-freefont-ttf \
      msttcorefonts 

I found libfontconfig1 and fontconfig slices in canonical/chisel-releases and can cut the slices as following.

RUN mkdir -p /rootfs/var/lib/dpkg/ \
    && chisel-wrapper \
        --generate-dpkg-status /rootfs/var/lib/dpkg/status -- \
        --release ubuntu-22.04\
        --root /rootfs \
            libfontconfig1_libs \
            fontconfig-config_config

...
# copy the rootfs into the final chiseled image

But I can find ones for fonts-freefont-ttf and msttcorefonts. Any ideas how to install these font packages to the 6.0.35-jammy-chiseled image? Thanks.

[lbussell]

If there are no existing slices for fonts-freefont-ttf and msttcorefonts, you can contribute them to the canonical/chisel-releases repo - see Adding New Slice Definitions.

@cjdcordeiro, is there a way to add an entire non-slice package from the default Ubuntu repositories, without contributing it as a slice? For example, if a package has no need to be sliced?

[cjdcordeiro]

👋

I'm afraid not. The only two options are:

• use a custom local chisel-release, where you'd add the fonts packages as slice definitions files, but simply use a glob to refer to all font files (e.g. /usr/share/fonts/truetype/**)
• propose it upstream, as @lbussell mentioned

We have quite a few examples of sliced font packages.

[tri-bao]

Thanks @lbussell and @cjdcordeiro I'll create a local slice for this.