amazon web services - Include custom fonts in AWS Lambda

Question

Does Anyone know something like ebextensions[2] in EC2 for AWS Lambda?

The goal is to install custom fonts in the AWS Lambda execution environment.

There are many ways to provide libraries and tools with fonts but the easiest way would be to include them via OS.

Also asked in response on AWS forum: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=807139&#807139

[2]How I install specific fonts on my AWS EC2 instance?

Answer 1

Here's what I just got to work for custom fonts on AWS Lambda with pandoc/xelatex.

I created a fonts directory in my project and placed all of my fonts there. Also in that directory I created a fonts.conf file that looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <dir>/var/task/fonts/</dir>
  <cachedir>/tmp/fonts-cache/</cachedir>
  <config></config>
</fontconfig>

And then in my (node.js based) handler function before shelling out to call pandoc I set an ENV var to tell fontconfig where to find the fonts.

process.env.FONTCONFIG_PATH='/var/task/fonts'

After doing that I can refer to a font, like Bitter, in my template by name (just Bitter) and then pandoc/xelatex/fontconfig/whatever knows which version of the font to use (like Bitter-Bold.otf vs Bitter-Italic.otf) based on the styling that any bit of text is supposed to have.

I figured this out based on the tips in this project for getting RSVG to work with custom fonts on Lambda: https://github.com/claudiajs/rsvg-convert-aws-lambda-binary/blob/master/README.md#using-custom-fonts