I discovered this issue while trying to install all-the-icons.
One step of installation involves using url-copy-file to install fonts. After running the install script, the font files are found in the correct place but are all empty. I verified that the script was not part of the problem by evaluating the url-copy-file expression myself with the proper values:
(url-copy-file "https://github.com/domtronn/all-the-icons.el/blob/master/fonts/all-the-icons.ttf?raw=true" "/home/me/.local/share/fonts/all-the-icons.ttf" t)
A file was created in my local filesytem in the correct place, but it was empty. I tried wgetting the file manually from github, and the download was successful.
Why doesn't url-copy-file work on my system? I am using arch linux, but in the issue logged on all-the-icons github repo, I see that other users with this problem are using FreeBSD. I'm not sure if this is relevant.
url-copy-filedoesn't handle the redirect it won't download a file. You can test this by usingcurlas it doesn't automaticall follow redirects. – wasamasa Feb 22 '19 at 23:35