[arch-general] Deleting fontconfig symlinks

[Martin Panter]

On 28 November 2012 15:49, Lewis Pike <phaselocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Previously, my way of disabling parts of the default fontconfig
> configuration was to delete the related symlinks in /etc/fonts/conf.d.
> Now that these symlinks are owned by the fontconfig package rather
> than created during the post-install script [1], I'm finding that
> these deleted symlinks are restored whenever fontconfig is upgraded.
> This has the effect of silently modifying my font configuration.
>
> 1. What is the recommended way of disabling parts of the default font
>    configuration such that it survives an upgrade of fontconfig?

Dunno about “recommended”. The /etc/fonts/conf.d/README file says to
adjust the symlinks, but as you point out it won’t work nicely when
installing new versions of the package. Perhaps if Pacman can handle
symlinks with “pacnew” files like it does to other config files (e.g.
/etc/group), that might be a little smoother.

One (ugly) workaround might be to write your own XML that reverses the
effect of the default, and put it in a file with a higher priority
number at the start.

> 2. Is simply changing any unwanted symlinks owned by fontconfig to
>    point to /dev/null an advisable solution?
>
> 3. If /dev/null is used as a target what will pacman do when
>    fontconfig is upgraded?

I expect it would be overwritten again with whatever target is
specified by the new package, so probably no better than deleting the
file.