Why won’t --output-path option create required directories, even though --output-dir will?

[arrowtype]

I was running a build shell script and quite confused why my variable fonts were failing to build.

Turns out, I was specifying an --output-path for them to save to – without first creating a directory structure for those paths.

This seems redundant and unintuitive, especially because --output-dir will create a required structure if it doesn’t exist.

Is this intentional? If so, can I ask the logic behind it?

Thanks!

Reproduction:

In this branch, running the ./fontmake-test.sh with FontMake 3.1.2 will reproduce this problem. Or, it seems that simply specifying a not-yet-created directory with the --output-path option will fail.

[arrowtype]

I ran into this again today, and was once again confused. 😅

I also found that I can’t just run --output-dir and --output-path together – I have to make the directory first, e.g. with mkdir -p.

This isn’t a huge problem, but seems a bit inconvenient.

[anthrotype]

yeah, that's odd indeed. Will be fixed with #1020

[arrowtype]

Nice, thank you!