Fedora Account System
Red Hat Associate
Red Hat Customer
Description of problem: A symbolic link with an absolute (rooted) target: /etc/fonts/conf.d/57-dejavu-sans.conf -> /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/57-dejavu-sans.conf creates some problems for the Fedora installer (anaconda). Because the target of the symlink is rooted instead of relative, then the link is difficult to virtualize when creating the install.img filesystem that the installer uses, and it is problematic whether the symlink actually will work during install. It would be easier to have a relative symlink such as /etc/fonts/conf.d/57-dejavu-sans.conf -> ../../../usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/57-dejavu-sans.conf An example of an existing relative symlink is /etc/fonts/conf.d/20-fix-globaladvance.conf -> ../conf.avail/20-fix-globaladvance.conf A similar problem occurs for: 20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans.conf 20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans-mono.conf 25-ttf-arphic-uming-render.conf 35-ttf-arphic-uming-aliases.conf 41-ttf-arphic-uming.conf 57-dejavu-sans-mono.conf 64-ttf-arphic-uming.conf 65-un-core-dotumbold.conf 65-un-core-dotum.conf 66-lohit-assamese.conf 66-lohit-bengali.conf 66-lohit-devanagari.conf 66-lohit-gujarati.conf 66-lohit-kannada.conf 66-lohit-oriya.conf 66-lohit-punjabi.conf 66-lohit-tamil.conf 66-lohit-telugu.conf 66-smc-meera.conf 66-vlgothic-gothic.conf 90-smc-fonts.conf 90-ttf-arphic-uming-embolden.conf Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): dejavu-sans-fonts-2.30-2.fc12.noarch How reproducible: every time Steps to Reproduce: 1. ls -l /etc/fonts/conf.d/57-dejavu-sans.conf 2. 3. Actual results: /etc/fonts/conf.d/57-dejavu-sans.conf -> /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/57-dejavu-sans.conf Expected results: /etc/fonts/conf.d/57-dejavu-sans.conf -> ../../../usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/57-dejavu-sans.conf Additional info:
The question of symlinks has been debated to death by FPC in the past and no one has found a compelling argument for or against absolute/relative symlinks. They work better in some situations, and worse in others. In the end it was decided not to mandate one form or the other (and disable the rpmlint check that tried to force one of the choices) In the fonts case absolute symlinks make the spec template simpler, which is a clear maintenance benefit, so the official Fedora fonts spec template uses absolute symlinks. I don't intend to change it unless rpm makes it as easy to use relative symlinks, or someone manages to convince FPC/FESCO they are clearly better and should be mandated. It is known some use cases are not absolute-symlinks-proof. However others are not relative-symlinks-proof. So you're not finding anything new. IMHO since Fedora intentionally does not mandate a specific symlink form, if you can't handle both of them, you're going to have trouble sooner or later.