Patch Berkeley Mono Font with Nerd Fonts

Intro

There is a font that I’m currently obsessed with: Berkeley Mono Font. Berkeley Mono is a great and aesthetic font for software engineers. As they claimed:

“By software engineers, for software engineers.”

You can check it out here https://neil.computer/notes/introducing-berkeley-mono and here https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono.

Problem

However there is a problem: I can’t use this font in my IDE since there is a no icons (devicons, codicons etc.) comes by default.

As you can see there are only ugly bold colorful columns instead of icons.

Solution

The solution is manually patching Berkeley Mono Font with Nerds Fonts Patcher to add these icons.

Nerd Fonts adds ~9K icons after patching.

You can customize these icon list with flags from patch script.

Patch

There are a lot methods to patch fonts, but I’m going to use docker way.

General command for patching from docker is:

$ docker run --rm -v /path/to/fonts:/in -v /path/for/output:/out nerdfonts/patcher [OPTIONS]

You can see all OPTIONS here:

Nerd Fonts Patcher v3.1.0-6 (4.8.1) (ff 20230101)
usage: font-patcher [-h] [-v] [-s] [--variable-width-glyphs]
                    [--debug [{0,1,2,3}]] [-q] [--careful] [-ext EXTENSION]
                    [-out OUTPUTDIR] [--makegroups [{-1,0,1,2,3,4,5,6}]] [-c]
                    [--codicons] [--fontawesome] [--fontawesomeext]
                    [--fontlogos] [--material] [--octicons] [--powersymbols]
                    [--pomicons] [--powerline] [--powerlineextra] [--weather]
                    [--boxdrawing] [--configfile CONFIGFILE] [--custom CUSTOM]
                    [--dry] [--glyphdir GLYPHDIR] [--has-no-italic] [-l]
                    [--metrics {HHEA,TYPO,WIN}] [--name FORCE_NAME]
                    [--postprocess POSTPROCESS] [--removeligs]
                    [--xavgcharwidth [XAVGWIDTH]]
                    [--progressbars | --no-progressbars]
                    font

Nerd Fonts Font Patcher: patches a given font with programming and development related glyphs

* Website: https://www.nerdfonts.com
* Version: 3.1.0-6
* Development Website: https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts
* Changelog: https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/blob/-/changelog.md

positional arguments:
  font                  The path to the font to patch (e.g., Inconsolata.otf)

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit
  -s, --mono, --use-single-width-glyphs
                        Whether to generate the glyphs as single-width not double-width (default is double-width) (Nerd Font Mono)
  --variable-width-glyphs
                        Do not adjust advance width (no "overhang") (Nerd Font Propo)
  --debug [{0,1,2,3}]   Verbose mode (optional: 1=just to file; 2*=just to terminal; 3=display and file)
  -q, --quiet           Do not generate verbose output
  --careful             Do not overwrite existing glyphs if detected
  -ext EXTENSION, --extension EXTENSION
                        Change font file type to create (e.g., ttf, otf)
  -out OUTPUTDIR, --outputdir OUTPUTDIR
                        The directory to output the patched font file to
  --makegroups [{-1,0,1,2,3,4,5,6}]
                        Use alternative method to name patched fonts (default=1)

Symbol Fonts:
  -c, --complete        Add all available Glyphs
  --codicons            Add Codicons Glyphs (https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-codicons)
  --fontawesome         Add Font Awesome Glyphs (http://fontawesome.io/)
  --fontawesomeext      Add Font Awesome Extension Glyphs (https://andrelzgava.github.io/font-awesome-extension/)
  --fontlogos           Add Font Logos Glyphs (https://github.com/Lukas-W/font-logos)
  --material, --mdi     Add Material Design Icons (https://github.com/templarian/MaterialDesign)
  --octicons            Add Octicons Glyphs (https://octicons.github.com)
  --powersymbols        Add IEC Power Symbols (https://unicodepowersymbol.com/)
  --pomicons            Add Pomicon Glyphs (https://github.com/gabrielelana/pomicons)
  --powerline           Add Powerline Glyphs
  --powerlineextra      Add Powerline Extra Glyphs (https://github.com/ryanoasis/powerline-extra-symbols)
  --weather             Add Weather Icons (https://github.com/erikflowers/weather-icons)

Expert Options:
  --boxdrawing          Force patching in (over existing) box drawing glyphs
  --configfile CONFIGFILE
                        Specify a file path for JSON configuration file (see sample: src/config.sample.json)
  --custom CUSTOM       Specify a custom symbol font, all glyphs will be copied; absolute path suggested
  --dry                 Do neither patch nor store the font, to check naming
  --glyphdir GLYPHDIR   Path to glyphs to be used for patching
  --has-no-italic       Font family does not have Italic (but Oblique), to help create correct RIBBI set
  -l, --adjust-line-height
                        Whether to adjust line heights (attempt to center powerline separators more evenly)
  --metrics {HHEA,TYPO,WIN}
                        Select vertical metrics source (for problematic cases)
  --name FORCE_NAME     Specify naming source ('full', 'postscript', 'filename', or concrete free name-string)
  --postprocess POSTPROCESS
                        Specify a Script for Post Processing
  --removeligs, --removeligatures
                        Removes ligatures specificed in JSON configuration file (needs --configfile)
  --xavgcharwidth [XAVGWIDTH]
                        Adjust xAvgCharWidth (optional: concrete value)
  --progressbars        Show percentage completion progress bars per Glyph Set (default)
  --no-progressbars     Don't show percentage completion progress bars per Glyph Set

Note

If you don’t add any flag/option, you’d probably not get the desired icons. This was the case I was pondering and trying to solve for a while.

In order to get all icons run below command:

docker run --rm \
	-v /tmp/berkeley-mono/origin:/in \
	-v /tmp/berkeley-mono/patched:/out \
	nerdfonts/patcher \
	--progressbars \
	--mono \
	--adjust-line-height \
  --fontawesome \
  --fontawesomeext \
  --fontlogos \
  --octicons \
  --codicons \
  --powersymbols \
  --pomicons \
  --powerline \
  --powerlineextra \
  --material \
  --weather

Don’t forget to modify the paths according to your current ones.

After the command completed, copy patched fonts into your OS’s font directory.

If MacOS, it’s ~/Library/Fonts:

$ cp /tmp/berkeley-mono/patched/*.ttf ~/Library/Fonts

If it’s Debian/Ubuntu, use local directory ${XDG_DATA_HOME}/fonts.

# $XDG_DATA_HOME is ~/.local/share
# More info: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory
$ cp /tmp/berkeley-mono/patched/*.ttf ${XDG_DATA_HOME}/fonts

# Reset/Rebuild the font cache
$ fc-cache -f -v

Info

You may see over the internet the local font directory is ~/.fonts. However for newer versions of OS you can place them under ~/.local/share/fonts. I don’t want polluted ~/ - $HOME directory.

If you want the font system-wide available, use the global font directory which is /usr/local/share/font.

If it’s Windows -hell no, I don’t know :)

The final version of patched Berkeley Mono font should look like below:

Now it’s completely great font for developing.

All done!

Changelog

2023-12-08 : Updated the man. Remove patcher image hash info.