Bug 2407061

Summary:	"custom" keyboard layout was moved and disabled during upgrade to f43
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	David Auer <dreua>
Component:	xkeyboard-config	Assignee:	Peter Hutterer <peter.hutterer>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	43	CC:	ajax, fedora, i18n-bugs, negativo17, peter.hutterer, rstrode
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Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Linux
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Last Closed:	2025-10-29 21:59:32 UTC	Type:	---
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Description David Auer 2025-10-29 13:47:32 UTC

You may not even know it yet, but there is a small useful feature which allows users to create custom keyboard layouts and select them as "A user-defined custom Layout" in Gnome settings. [1]

This is achieved by adding a file named "custom" in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols which places it in the jurisdiction of this package, if I'm not mistaken.

During upgrade to F43 this file was deleted and I was left with a broken layout (mostly US). Can we do anything to prevent that from happening again on Fedora upgrades?

Thanks a lot in advance!

David

1: https://who-t.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-pre-supplied-custom-keyboard-layout.html
I'm using this for better accessibility of {[]} as a software developer on a German keyboard: https://gist.github.com/dreua/2520359142a9cc4dd486321d84156422

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1 Pierre Le Marre 2025-10-29 15:30:34 UTC

Your file probably got *moved* during the update of the xkeyboard-config package to 2.45. See Peter’s blog: https://who-t.blogspot.com/2025/08/xkeyboard-config-245-has-new-install.html

If you are using a Wayland session, you may be interested in moving your custom layout to a *user* directory. See: https://xkbcommon.org/doc/current/user-configuration.html#user-config-locations

Comment 2 David Auer 2025-10-29 21:59:32 UTC

Perfect, if I understand correctly that was a one time issue *and* I could even move it to a user directory if I wanted, great news! 
Thanks a lot for your fast and great response! <3

Closing this as there is probably nothing that the package can do about it. Maybe rpmconf could alert if "rpmmoved" files or directories are found or an extra "post upgrade" step could be added to the upgrading documentation to catch stuff like this.