Re: Bitstream Vera fonts rpm (fontconfig vers

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Mon, 2003-04-21 at 14:08, Nicolas.Mailhot wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Owen Taylor" <otaylor redhat com>
> To: "Nicolas Mailhot" <Nicolas Mailhot laPoste net>
> Cc: <Jim Gettys hp com>; <fonts gnome org>; <michael fedrowitz de>;
> <keithp keithp org>
> Sent: Monday, April 21, 2003 6:51 PM
> Subject: Re: Bitstream Vera fonts rpm (fontconfig vers
> 
> 
> > On Thu, 2003-04-17 at 16:43, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> > > Le jeu 17/04/2003 � 22:16, Jim Gettys hp com a �crit :
> > > > Aaaarg!
> > > >
> > > > This seems pretty broken (or do you have an obsolte fontconfig
> installed
> > > > in /usr/local?).  I get 2.1.94 when I as the version number from
> > > > either fc-list or fc-cache, that I installed earlier today from
> Keith's
> > > > latest tarball....
> > >
> > > [nim rousalka nim]$ fc-cache -V
> > > fontconfig version 1.0.2
> > > [nim rousalka nim]$ rpm -q fontconfig
> > > fontconfig-2.1-9
> > > [nim rousalka nim]$ rpm -V fontconfig
> > > [nim rousalka nim]$ which fc-cache
> > > /usr/bin/fc-cache
> > > [nim rousalka nim]$ rpm -q --whatprovides /usr/bin/fc-cache
> > > fontconfig-2.1-9
> > >
> > > That's :
> > >
> http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/redhat/9/i386/fontconfig-2.1-9.i386.html
> > >
> > > ie the official RH9 fontconfig (of course I could rebuild one from Keith
> > > sources but what would be the point ? this is the version most RH users
> > > will have for a long time)
> > >
> > > That is standard RH practice - build from one official version and then
> > > add patches (often from upstream cvs) till it's stabilized enough. I
> > > guess either they started from 1.0.2 or one of the included patches was
> > > made for this version and replaced the real version number. No big deal
> > > - they were among the first to offer me a fontconfiged setup and I won't
> > > begrudge them a slightly erroneous version number.
> > >
> > > So either we put the -f inconditionally or just use fc-cache the way
> > > it's supposed to work, considering most users won't hit the bug (and if
> > > lots of them did that would be reason enough to have distros release an
> > > errata)
> > >
> > > (cc-ing Owen Taylor since he seems to be RedHat's fonconfig maintainer)
> >
> > Insufficient context here. What's the problem you are trying to solve?
> 
> I've been looking into providing a clean spec file for vera fonts, so they
> can be distributed in rpm form at the official site.
> It appears there is a bug in fontconfig which makes fc-cache ureliable for
> old fontconfig versions - you have to use fc-cache -f instead for
> robustness.
> 
> Since I want to do a generic rpm fontconfig is not listed in requires. The
> script look for fc-cache and execute it if present. There have been requests
> to change the fc-cache command to fc-cache -f (and since the -f is expensive
> add a test for fontconfig version via fc-cache -V).
> 
> Unfortunately the version returned by fc-cache -V packaged by RH seems to be
> totally disconnected from fontconfig actual version as evidenced by this
> simple test. Since you seem to be RH's fontconfig maintainer I CC'd you on
> the remarks this test provoqued.
> 
> The full mail thread is archived at :
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/fonts/2003-April/msg00005.html

The fontconfig version number in Red Hat is _certainly_ not "totally
disconnected" from the upstream version. Red Hat 9 ships fontconfig-2.1
+ patches, the version number is 2.1-RELEASE.

What you are seeing is that fc-cache -V produces a number that 
you don't care about - the SOLIB version number, rather than the
package version number. Take it up with Keith if you don't like
it; there is no difference between Red Hat's package and upstream
here (unless Keith changed this in 2.2.)

I don't see any great harm if you end up doing fc-cache -f on Red Hat
because it has version 2.1 of fontconfig, even though it has the
fixes in question.

I feel like I should comment on your spec file, but I'll avoid doing,
because I'd have enough trouble telling you how to make a spec file
for fonts that is portable across Red Hat versions, much less across 
different distributions; you might want to look, though, at how
fc-cache is handled in
http://people.redhat.com/otaylor/tmp/fonts-arabic/fonts-arabic-1.3-1.src.rpm
Note in particular the use of %ghost. (Your package will most
likely leave a directory behind if you install it then uninstall it.)

Regards,
                                                Owen