Where should the modular X11R7 fonts get installed to?

Mike A. Harris mharris at redhat.com
Sun Nov 6 15:13:06 UTC 2005


Now that /usr/X11R6 is obsolete, and all X files are moving to
the /usr hierarchy, it is time to determine where certain things
should live, and comply with the FHS.

By default, unless overridden, the X11R7 font packages install
all of the fonts into /usr/lib/X11/fonts/*.  Since fonts are
architecture independent data files however, it is my opinion
that they belong under /usr/share somewhere, as this is the FHS
mandated location for architecture independent data files.

We currently package the rest of the fonts our OS supplies
under %{_datadir}/fonts, which translates to /usr/share/fonts,
and is FHS compliant.

I'm currently of the opinion that we should install the X.Org
fonts into "/usr/share/fonts/X11", to have them installed into
an FHS compliant location, but also in their own namespace, thus
avoiding conflicts with other packages.

Another possibility, is to install them into /usr/share/X11/fonts,
which would also be FHS compliant, and put more strength on the
namespacing aspect, but also grouping the X font files along with
other architecture independent data included with X.

Since upstream X.Org currently does not honour the FHS very well,
it is our job to figure out where best the files belong in a
Linux FHS compliant world.

As such, I'm seeking opinions from other Red Hat developers, and
Fedora community developers.  I'd really like to solve this, and
get the packages built ASAP, so please reply ASAP.

Also, feel free to forward this email to any other relevant
mailing lists if you think it deserves a wider audience, as I'm
only on this list.

Thanks in advance.




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