[RFC]: Breaking out fontconfig and freetype into seperate packages

[Harold L Hunt II]

Nicholas,

Can you explain to me what fontconfig and freetype2 are, specifically?

Do they consist of a couple libraries and some executables?

How many files are involved in a package that contains them?

Are any of their libraries linked to from within the standard XFree86 
distribution?

The reason I ask these questions is that I am all for splitting out 
fontconfig and freetype2, as long as I can cleanly exclude them from the 
packaging scripts and if I don't have to do too much recompiling when 
new fontconfig/freetype2 packages are released.

Answer those questions and we can think about it.

Harold

Nicholas Wourms wrote:

> Harold,
> 
> Would you be against having someone else maintain the freetype2 & 
> fontconfig packages external of XFree86 sources?  There are a couple of 
> reasons for wanting this:
> 
> 1)Freetype & fontconfig aren't necessarily X libraries and they don't 
> specifically require X.  Some non-X packages are starting to use it, and 
> others will follow in the future.  Also, it is possible that one could 
> link them to a hybrid w32api/cygwin gui application.
> 
> 2)XFree86 is notorious for lagging behind the current releases, 
> especially in respect to fontconfig.
> 
> 3)Most all of the major linux vendors do this, and have been doing it 
> for quite some time now.
> 
> 4)It means less work and less to download each time there's an update to 
> some other XFree86 library or binary.
> 
> I've been tracking current sources and have working packaging scripts 
> for both.  If you are interested, I'd be willing to do an ITP in 
> cygwin-apps, having them target the /usr prefix as opposed to /usr/X11R6.
> 
> Also, I'd like to do an ITP for ttmkfdir, but I'll hold off on that 
> until we get this request squared away.
> 
> Cheers,
> Nicholas
> 
>