[Fontconfig] The cache fontconfig directory

Patrick Lam plam at MIT.EDU
Wed Apr 5 20:31:55 PDT 2006


Quanah Gibson-Mount wrote:
> Is there any way to *not* use/disable the {localstatedir}/fontconfig 
> directory?
> 
> We use AFS at Stanford, and I do not want this created or used at all.  
> I tried making this be /var/cache/fontconfig, but this gives me 
> permission denied errors on make install, and in any case, I want to 
> make sure that fontconfig never tries to use whatever directory I set it 
> to.

First of all, {localstatedir}/fontconfig should only be writable by 
root.  Only fc-cache creates files in that directory.

If {localstatedir}/fontconfig does not exist or is not writeable, then 
fc-cache will write files to the font directories themselves (if it can).

When fontconfig-using applications run and don't find cache information 
in {localstatedir}/fontconfig or the font directories, they create a 
per-user cache file which lives in that user's home directory.

You have found a bug in fontconfig in that make install fails if it 
can't make the {localstatedir}/fontconfig directory.  I don't know how 
to fix that bug, but I'd welcome patches.  You just need to find the 
line where it creates the directory and add a -; the complication is 
that we go through automake, etc.

pat




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