XFree86 4.3 and already installed packages (was Re: Xfree 4.3 = no need for Xft, Xft1, Xrender, and fontconfig packages)

[Danilo Segan <dsegan gmx net>]

Ryan, Jeff,
It still seems to me that XFree86 4.3.0 doesn't include the Owen 
Taylor's patch.

Yes, it seems reasonable to expect that whoever runs XFree86 4.3.0 has 
already properly configured fontconfig and Xft, but it might not be so 
if (s)he is using only non-Xft apps.

So, one might still encounter the GARNOME fontconfig FAQ, even with a 
properly installed XFree86 4.3.0. At least, loading of my GARNOME failed 
when I first installed XFree86 4.3.0 from source, so I replaced the 
library libfontconfig.* with the ones compiled with GARNOME. Of course, 
this is a problem since I insist on not running fc-cache as root, and 
having a load of fonts.cache-1 files around several directories (I tend 
to update the system directories with new fonts once in a while).

And of course, it's quite unreasonable to expect that everyone is 
running XFree86 4.3.0.


But, I'd like to propose another solution to this and some other problems.

Would it make sense to have a target in GARNOME that would generate 
"cookies" based on the pkg-config reports? For instance, "make 
checkstatus" in a misc/fontconfig would check with pkg-config if current 
fontconfig-$GARVERSION is installed, and if it is, generate "cookies/*", 
so as not to install it again when it comes to it through some dependencies.

I think this would be the step toward the general-use GARNOME, even 
though it's "for testers and tweakers" (or at least I remeber Jeff 
saying so in the good [not so] ol' days ;).

Any thoughts?

Regards,
Danilo