F45 Change Proposal: Fontconfig 2.18 (system-wide)

Project Discussion Change Proposals
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Fontconfig 2.18

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Wiki
Announced

:link: Summary

Update fontconfig package in Fedora from 2.17 to 2.18.

:link: Owner

:link: Current status

  • Targeted release: Fedora Linux 45
  • Last updated: 2026-06-30
  • [ Announced]
  • [ Discussion thread]
  • FESCo issue:
  • Tracker bug:
  • Release notes tracker:

:link: Detailed Description

This aims to upgrade fontconfig package from 2.17 to 2.18. The highlight of changes in 2.18 is available here.

:link: Feedback

:link: Benefit to Fedora

Fedora ships the latest release of fontconfig. Also, the safe guard in new cache format to avoid updating from older versions of fontconfig.

:link: Scope

  • Proposal owners:

    • Submit PR for appstream and python-fontconfig to update the code because they use freetype-dependent API without fcfreetype.h

  • Other developers:

    • The above package owners may need to apply a patch before mass-reubuild. Otherwise it may simply fails.

  • Release engineering: #13404

  • Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

  • Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

  • Alignment with the Fedora Strategy:

:link: Upgrade/compatibility impact

2.18 should be basically compatible with 2.17. However, if users has own fonts installed, they may see different font matching behavior. In that case, users may need to have extra config rule to get it back to normal for a short term.

Steps to check:

  1. Run fc-scan -f "%{genericfamily}\n" /path/to/fontdir/fontfile
  2. If the result shows 0:
  3. Create a config file and store it to $HOME/.config/fontconfig/conf.d, e.g. 0-familyname-scan.conf:

Family Name Generic Alias Name such as sans-serif, serif, monospace

  1. Regenerate a cache with fc-cache -rv /path/to/fontdir

:link: Early Testing (Optional)

Do you require ‘QA Blueprint’ support? Y/N

:link: How To Test

Try upgrading fontconfig to 2.18 and your favarite GUI applications if the font selection works as expected.

:link: User Experience

The font matching behavior for fallback should be better than 2.17.x.

:link: Dependencies

Nope more than the above packages requring some source code change.

:link: Contingency Plan

  • Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) Maintainer will revert fontconfig to 2.17.x
  • Contingency deadline: 100% Code Complete Deadline
  • Blocks release? No

:link: Documentation

:link: Release Notes

Last edited by @amoloney 2026-06-30T17:09:33Z

Last edited by @amoloney 2026-06-30T17:09:33Z

1 Like
2

How do you feel about the proposal as written?

  • Strongly in favor
  • In favor, with reservations
  • Neutral
  • Opposed, but could be convinced
  • Strongly opposed
0 voters

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1 Like
3

This change proposal has now been submitted to FESCo with ticket #3642 for voting.

To find out more, please visit our Changes Policy documentation.

4

It might be worth noting that this Change has already been pushed to Rawhide - before it was even submitted to FESCo. That’s not ideal.

5

@tagoh, “No more”, rather.

6

Sorry for that but just wanted to catch up FTBFS on the mass-rebuild because of the header file changes as noted in Change proposal. That said, it isn’t for any incompatible changes in the binary. We can revert this without rebuilding if needed.

7

Thank you for correction. updated wiki.