[Fontconfig] [SOLVED] Conflict with multiple fontconfig instances in same process

[Francesco Pretto]

Hello,

I just post my experience with fontconfig, in case it may be useful
for other users hitting similar problems: I have mylibrary.so bundling
a statically linked version (2.13.1) of fontconfig and a
3rdpartylib.so bundling an unknown version of fontconfig, probably
with static linking as well. In my process, when I load both
libraries, functionalities of 3rdpartylib.so starts to misbehave, like
common data (probably the cache, but I wasn't able to identify the
exact location of this cache) being shared is getting corrupted.
Searches directed me to bug reports like[1], with comments pointing to
a recent change[2] in the caching mechanism of fontconfig. I checked
out latest fonconfig repository, updated the copy of fontconfig in my
library and the problem in the 3rd party library disappeared. I will
monitor the situation in the next days but this seems the right
solution for me. I just have a question: is 2.13.1 really the last
stable version of fontconfig or 2.13.92 which is present in the
release directory[3]? Official website[4] is still pointing to the
former.

Thanks,
Francesco

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=864082
[2] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/-/commit/c4324f54ee16e648ba91f3e9c66af13ab3b1754c
[3] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/fontconfig/release/fontconfig-2.13.92.tar.xz
[4] https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/fontconfig/