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xorg-x11 supplies the /etc/init.d/xfs script.  This script contains the
following:

# While we at it, update fontconfig's cache as well
if [ -x /usr/bin/fc-cache -a "${changed}" = "yes" ]
then
    ebegin "Updating FC cache"
    HOME="/root" /usr/bin/fc-cache -f
    eend 0
fi

It appears that the -f flag rebuilds all the font caches even if they are up to
date.  When there are a lot of fonts installed, this is a big waste of time,
and significantly slows down boot-up time (the code always executes on
boot-up).  On my system, fc-cache -f takes 2 minutes to execute, while fc-cache
takes under a second, both in the typical scenario of no caches to update.

Since fc-cache can apparently detect for itself when rebuilding a cache is
necessary, why is the shell-script check there, when you can just omit the -f
flag instead?

I would rewrite the above code as:

# While we at it, ensure fontconfig's cache is up to date
if [ -x /usr/bin/fc-cache ]
then
    ebegin "Updating FC cache"
    HOME="/root" /usr/bin/fc-cache
    eend 0
fi



Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

You're clearly correct that the -f is a bad idea on a number of levels. But
since we already have ${changed}, why waste the time of even running fc-cache
if it's unnecessary?

I didn't know it was there, 'fc-cache -f' was bad for the fonts eclass (altough
that will change). But I think there is indeed little point in having it.

Fixed in 6.8.2-r2 and 6.8.99.5. Thanks!

Closing.