How to use the Adobe Source Code Pro font?

Adobe released an open source font family called "Source Code Pro" (download here, Slashdot article here). How do I install it?


  1. Download the archive from the Source Code Pro homepage. You can do it also using wget: Open a terminal (ctrl-alt-t or press the win key and type "terminal") and type

    wget https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code-pro/archive/2.030R-ro/1.050R-it.zip
    
  2. Unzip the archive (you can use Nautilus for that, or use the following command).

    unzip 1.050R-it.zip
    
  3. Locate and ensure your fonts folder exist in your home directory, often in ~/.local/share/fonts folder (either go to home in Nautilus and create a new folder, or type the following from the terminal)

    fontpath="${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}"/fonts
    
    mkdir -p $fontpath
    

If you already have that directory, don't worry.

  1. Move the Open Type fonts (*.otf) to the newly created .fonts directory. In command line, that would be

    cp source-code-pro-*-it/OTF/*.otf $fontpath
    
  2. If you haven't done it yet, open a terminal, and type

    fc-cache -f -v
    

Your font is now ready to use and the applications should be able to see it.

All in one script for those who simply want to copy/paste the answer

#!/bin/bash
set  -euo pipefail
I1FS=$'\n\t'
mkdir -p /tmp/adodefont
cd /tmp/adodefont
wget -q --show-progress -O source-code-pro.zip https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code-pro/archive/2.030R-ro/1.050R-it.zip
unzip -q source-code-pro.zip -d source-code-pro
fontpath="${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}"/fonts
mkdir -p $fontpath
cp -v source-code-pro/*/OTF/*.otf $fontpath
fc-cache -f
rm -rf source-code-pro{,.zip}

If you want to install system wide instead of per user, copy the files to /usr/local/share/fonts/ instead of ~/.local/share/fonts/.


In order to install Source Code Pro, you can:

  1. Go to Google Fonts
  2. Type source code in the search box (the only match should be Source Code Pro)
  3. Click "Add to collection"
  4. Click on the text sample (this should present all the font styles)
  5. Tick all the check boxes
  6. Click the download icon (a down arrow on the top right) and download as Zip file

Now you just need to decompress the Zip file into your ~/.fonts folder:

mkdir -p ~/.fonts/Source_Code_Pro
unzip Source_Code_Pro.zip  -d ~/.fonts/Source_Code_Pro

You may need to run

fc-cache -f

to make the fonts available (no need to log out).