Move available config files from /etc to /usr

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

At the upgrade to fontconfig 2.10 a decade ago, the directory for storing available config files was changed from /etc/fonts/conf.avail to /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail. It was done upstream as well as in Debian, but Ubuntu delayed the transition for some reason. I think we should do that transition in Ubuntu too. That will get Ubuntu in sync with the upstream documentation and the delta to Debian gets reduced a little.

The changes needed are straightforward. I put a proposed upload in this PPA:

https://launchpad.net/~gunnarhj/+archive/ubuntu/fontconfig

and I would appreciate someone's eyes on it.

So, what's the caveat? The only thing I can think of is that distros, system admins and individual users may have tweaked the font configuration by including symlinks which point to the moved files. While I don't have the impression that such symlinks are very frequent — custom conf files put directly in /etc/fonts/conf.d or equivalent places in $HOME seem to be more common — to the extent they exist, they will be silently disabled.

Bug #2005124 revealed an example of a symlink which pointed to a file which will be moved if we do this. OTOH, in that case upstream added a symlink with the very same name, so we had to deal with that conflict. If the name of Kubuntu's link had been something else, we might not be aware of it yet.

The changelog for this upload:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fontconfig/2.10.1-0ubuntu1

states that the transition will be done "later with another upload once the details are sorted". Are there other details which I have missed? If not, I suppose that the potential inconvenience is approximately as big today as it was 2012. And since next LTS release is more than one year ahead, this ought to be an appropriate time to make the change.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

This was uploaded to lunar after a brief IRC conversation:

https://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2023/02/23/%23ubuntu-desktop.html#t14:18

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks, I had no objection so let's see how it's going

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package fontconfig - 2.14.1-3ubuntu3

---------------
fontconfig (2.14.1-3ubuntu3) lunar; urgency=medium

  * Implement the transition of available config files from /etc to
    /usr after a decade of delay (LP: #2007124).

fontconfig (2.14.1-3ubuntu2) lunar; urgency=medium

  * debian/control:
    - Make fontconfig-config break/replace kubuntu-settings-desktop
      << 1:23.04.3 to handle symlink conflict (LP: #2005124).

 -- Gunnar Hjalmarsson <email address hidden> Thu, 23 Feb 2023 15:54:28 +0100