The recommended approach of including custom assets?

Metric-Void

I'm working on a plugin that involves custom font. However, I found that when using url() directive in CSS, it will always point to the folder public/assets/.

I'd like to pack the font with my extension (they're only around 20KB). So what's the best way to register the font files?
Is it a good approach to copy them to the assets folder when the plugin is enabled, and delete them when the plugin is disabled?

Metric-Void

And also... while we are here. Flarum is built on Laravel, so is there a way to tinker it?

Metric-Void

OK, I've found answers to my questions. Will write them down so others can follow.

If there is an assets folder in your plugin, Flarum will copy it to public/assets/extensions/your-extension-name-in-dash-case. This process does not require any code on your own. However, Flarum will not remove that folder when the extension is disabled.
To achieve automatic asset deploy and removal, I made a class that implements Extend\LifecycleInterface, and implement onEnable(), onDisable() and extend(). This class can then be included in the top-level extend.php.
Paths to directories can be acquired with public_path() and storage_path(). However there seems to be a Flarum\Foundation\Paths class in the upcoming release. These function may get removed in the future, no idea.
tinker seems possible according to this post. But I failed to composer require laravel/tinker because it seems to conflict with illuminate/console. Yet to find a solution.

clarkwinkelmann

Metric-Void yes indeed, the assets folder in the extension would be the "official" way of publishing assets for now.

I can't comment on the path helpers as I'm not sure what decision has been taken, but there's indeed some changes coming to the helper functions.

I'm not aware of anyone successfully implementing tinker. It won't be as easy as just installing the package (in particular, because we don't auto-discover packages like Laravel), but as luceos points out in the linked discussion, it should be possible, as we use the same console packages as Laravel.

It's important to note that Flarum isn't a Laravel app nor it is a Laravel package. It's a standalone app that uses some of Laravel components, including the container, database and commands. The router, request handlers and middlewares are not Laravel however.