fontmake-mp is a Python script (fmp.py) that adds parallel UFO source compilation support to the fontmake font compiler. It supports automation of parallel UFO compilation up to the number of available cores on your system.
And it makes a difference.
Benchmarks for otf + ttf builds x 4 variant UFO source in sequence vs. in parallel:
fontmake must be installed on your system to use this script. You can install fontmake with the command:
$ pip install fontmake
Download the executable Python script with either of the following approaches:
Use cURL to pull fmp.py to the location where you would like to execute the file:
$ curl -L -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/source-foundry/fontmake-mp/master/fmp.py
Download the .zip archive of the source repository, unpack it, and move the fmp.py script to the location of your choice on your system. You can discard all other repository files and the unpacked repository directory.
By default, fmp.py compiles both .ttf and .otf fonts during the compilation process. This can be modified as needed to one or the other of these file types (see Manual modifications section below).
The format for command line usage is the following:
$ python fmp.py [UFO path 1] [UFO path 2] ... [UFO path n]
Faster compiles can be achieved for some users with the use of the PyPy JIT compiler rather than the cPython interpreter. Install PyPy on your system, create a virtualenv environment for PyPy, install fontmake (see above), and execute the script with the following command:
$ pypy fmp.py [UFO path 1] [UFO path 2] ... [UFO path n]
fmp.py will spawn a new process for each UFO source directory in a multi-font build request up to the number of available cores on your system. This value is determined by the Python multiprocessing.cpu_count() method.
To manually set the spawned process number, modify the PROCESSES constant integer at the top of the fmp.py file to the desired number of processes. fmp.py will automatically decrease this number to the number of requested UFO compiles when the latter number is less than the requested number of spawned processes. This means that you can set this to the total number of CPU on your system and the script will always spawn the number of processes that match your UFO compilation requests up to a maximum of your setting.
The build file type can be modified in the BUILD_FILE_TYPE constant at the top of the fmp.py file. This should be formatted as a Python tuple. Use the following settings to modify your build:
BUILD_FILE_TYPE = ('ttf')BUILD_FILE_TYPE = ('otf')fontmake-mp is built on the excellent fontmake project where all of the hard work happens.