Doesn't that depend on the font author providing a NL version?

e.g if you want the FiraCode improvements[1] over FiraMono without the ligatures. Without editor support, you would have to build it yourself since they don't distribute a NL version.

[1] https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode#whats-in-the-box

That's what I mean; it's often easier to use a font that doesn't have ligatures (like the NL variant) than to use a font with ligatures and hope your editor lets you disable ligatures.