Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 188705
libXft.so.1 no longer is available
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:11:30 EST
Description of problem: error while loading shared libraries: libXft.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): FC5 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install libXft-2.1.8.2-3.2.rpm 2. 3. Actual results: Software that expects the older libXft.so.1 will no longer run Expected results: In the older FC4 release libXft.so.1 was available through xorg-x11-libs-6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2.i386.rpm along with libXft.so.2 Additional info:
This is intentional. libXft doesn't build libXft.so.1 anymore, using the latest sources. The shared library version has changed upstream. No program in Fedora Core or Fedora Extras requires libXft.so.1. Xft1 is not going to be supported or shipped. Please recompile your software, if possible. If necessary, there is a compatibility layer for Xft1: http://ftp.x.org/pub/X11R7.0/doc/html/Xft.3.html It may be possible to build yourself an old copy of libXft.so.1, but not with the current xorg-x11 sources. If you look around on www.x.org you may find an old version of Xft1, but I'm not even absolutely certain it will compile against the newer version of X11. You may have to do this if you have binary-only software that won't update.
Yep, X11R7 does not support Xft1 anymore. Xft1 was only ever available as part of the monolithic X.Org and XFree86 source trees and to the best of my knowledge was never released as standalone tarballs. I researched this a few months ago when we received a previous bug report concerning Xft1 missing. Keith Packard, the official upstream maintainer of Xft considers Xft1 ancient and no longer supports this old version of the library. X.Org no longer provides nor supports Xft1 either, and there are no upstream tarballs of it available anywhere, including from Keith Packard. Xft1 is dead as a doornail, so any software (binary only or otherwise) which requires Xft1 needs to either be updated by its authors to use Xft2. Anyone stuck with binary-only software that links to Xft1 can use older versions of the operating system for compatibility, or perhaps run an older OS release inside a Xen virtual machine instance.