[Fontconfig] Re: Structure of cache files

[Keith Packard]

On Wed, 2005-10-05 at 15:19 -0400, James Cloos wrote:

> Perhaps it should be $FOO -> /var/cache/fontconfig/$FOO so that all
> of the various paths can be handled.  At least /usr/local/share/fonts
> and /local/share/fonts will get used and should be supported.

You could do that by mapping / -> /var/cache/fontconfig

> I wonder though how much of a performance hit we'll see by abusing
> the kernels' filesystem caches by doubling the number if directories
> searched each time a fontconfig-linked program starts?

The alternative is to attempt to construct a file naming scheme that
would map directories onto unique filenames. I don't see a trivial way
to do that; we could use device-number/inode pairs or some such...

> As an example, given a reasonably large number of font directories
> (each dist package has its own under /usr/share/fonts, I tend to
> keep my ~/.fonts organized like that, etc) and the large number of
> libraries most GUI apps link against these days whenever I emerge
> anything on my gentoo laptop with X running it takes minutes each
> time ldconfig is run versus deciseconds when X is not running.

yeah, reducing the amount of FS thrashing would be nice.

> Keith> If we do this, what would you think about removing the whole
> Keith> /var/cache/fontconfig heirarchy when fontconfig was purged?
> 
> Probably should happen; even if it is being purged just to make sure a
> re-install is clean the user probably wants to regenerate all of the
> cache files.  But that should be an issue for the packager rather than
> for the developer.

Yes, of course (he says as debian packager for fontconfig).

-keith

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/fontconfig/attachments/20051005/f7f35942/attachment.pgp