Bug 348094

Summary:	x11-base/xorg-server should RDEPEND on media-fonts/font-misc-misc
Product:	Gentoo Linux	Reporter:	Francesco Mazzoli <e.imhotep>
Component:	Current packages	Assignee:	Gentoo X packagers <x11>
Status:	RESOLVED NEEDINFO
Severity:	normal	CC:	scvalex
Priority:	High
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Francesco Mazzoli 2010-12-07 22:16:57 UTC

Today I removed xterm and xmonad stopped working.
I found out that it is because xterm pulls in font-misc-misc which was removed with --depclean.
Quoting an IRC person answering my doubts:
"also, I would report a bug to gentoo about that package; given that misc-fixed *is* thefallback font, I would make all the X server packages depend on it so there is always a fallback font available.
It's especially silly to make xterm depend on it because xterm doesn't need the font on whatever machine it's running on; it's a server-side font, so it should be a dependency of the X11 server and possibly the font server."


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install a bare-bone xorg
2. Applications will have no fallback font.



Expected Results:  
font-misc-misc should be a dependency of the xorg server.

Comment 1 Rémi Cardona (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2010-12-09 20:05:46 UTC

(In reply to comment #0)
> Quoting an IRC person answering my doubts:
> "also, I would report a bug to gentoo about that package; given that misc-fixed
> *is* thefallback font, I would make all the X server packages depend on it so
> there is always a fallback font available.
> It's especially silly to make xterm depend on it because xterm doesn't need the
> font on whatever machine it's running on; it's a server-side font, so it should
> be a dependency of the X11 server and possibly the font server."

That IRC person is ill-informed. There *is* a fallback font which is *always* available (since it's statically compiled into the server): "fixed".

This is the *only* mandatory font, and it's still available. xlsfonts should confirm it.

> Expected Results:  
> font-misc-misc should be a dependency of the xorg server.

No, please try to use the "fixed" font in Xmonad instead. If it works, Xmonad should be fixed to either fallback to the "fixed" font or use that by default, or even dep on a default font itself.

Thanks