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Gnome extension breaks fontconfig for some applications

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Metadata

Project
snapcraft (launchpad)
Number
#1998269
Type
issue
State
open
Author
~zoopgoop
Labels
—
Created
Updated
Closed
—

Current evaluation

Untriaged GNOME-extension fontconfig failures block Wine initialization and Steam UI fonts; a minimal reproducer and FONTCONFIG_FILE workaround exist, but root cause and current impact remain unverified.

Suggested action: needs triage

Reason: The report includes a minimal example, identifies FONTCONFIG_FILE as a reproducible workaround, and corroborates failures in Wine and Steam, but no labels, comments, or maintainer assessment exist. The reporter says the vendored-font theory is unconfirmed, and current source says the legacy font launcher is unused by the GNOME extension on core22 and later, so applicability to supported versions and the external desktop-integration implementation must be established.

Evaluated by: mr-cal-bot

Impact: 58 Quick Win: 14 Complexity: 62 Confidence: 87 Actionability: 64

Issue body

The gnome extension (sometimes) causes fonts to fail to load, causing an array of bizarre behavior in some applications including missing text and some programs failing to load entirely. This is due to the behavior in `desktop-launch` and/or `hooks-configure-fonts`. My best guess that I haven't been able to confirm is that this specifically breaks applications that attempt to use vendored fonts that the application itself provides. I discovered this while trying to get wine to run while snapping Lutris, and discovering after making a minimal example[1] that `wineboot --init` fails to copy `.dll` files into the wineprefix if the `gnome` extension is present. Comparing Wine debug logs between the two, it seems that the wineserver begins to explode when loading fonts (somewhere around the CJK fonts) causing a very subtle and silent failure not present when the `gnome` extension is missing. Indeed, even simply copying the `desktop-launch` script and putting it in the command chain in without the gnome extension itself being present will reproduce this. Unsetting, `FONTCONFIG_FILE` in the snap shell before running `wineboot --init` will fix it. This was also corroborated with the Steam snap, which does not use the gnome extension, but does use a hand-modified copy of the `desktop-launch` script (as well as what appears to be parts of the `hooks-configure-fonts` script). Big Picture Mode currently does not display any fonts due to not being able to load from its own `ui-fonts` file, but again, doing `unset FONTCONFIG_FILE` in the snap shell before running it fixes this behavior. The section seems to be doing something valuable in an attempt to make various font sources available within the snap, as well as managing the fonts cache, but in practice something seems to be broken right now that's causing a very subtle failure cascade due to not being able to find certain fonts/configurations in some applications. I have noticed that the generated `fonts.conf`files tend to have weird broken pieces like `/usr/local/share//fonts` which is a valid POSIX path, and even one that actually exists, but the double `//` in many of them makes me wonder if something strange is going on somewhere when doing path discovery/construction. It could be a red herring, but it's strange enough that I wonder if maybe the source of both problems is the same. [1]: https://gist.github.com/ZoopOTheGoop/781bad67844f448403e7e7f41c1b5652

Evaluation history

Date Model Scores Action Summary
stealth/space-bunny-alpha
Impact: 58
Quick Win: 14
Complexity: 62
Confidence: 87
Actionability: 64
needs triage Untriaged GNOME-extension fontconfig failures block Wine initialization and Steam UI fonts; a minimal reproducer and FONTCONFIG_FILE workaround exist, but root cause and current impact remain unverified.
stealth/space-bunny-alpha
Impact: 58
Quick Win: 17
Complexity: 58
Confidence: 78
Actionability: 68
needs triage Untriaged report that GNOME extension font configuration can prevent Wine initialization and Steam UI fonts from loading; workarounds and a minimal example exist, but the root cause is unconfirmed.
qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6
Impact: 70
Quick Win: 28
Staleness: 95
Complexity: 60
Confidence: 70
Support Request: 20
close stale GNOME extension causes fontconfig failures in snap applications like Wine and Steam; issue is 1373 days old with no maintainer response or labels.
qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b
Staleness: 95
Complexity: 65
Confidence: 85
Support Request: 5
close stale GNOME extension fontconfig handling causes font loading failures in apps like Wine and Steam. Unlabelled, zero comments, inactive for ~3.6 years.
qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b
Staleness: 95
Complexity: 75
Confidence: 85
Support Request: 5
close stale Technical report detailing how the GNOME snap extension breaks fontconfig in apps like Wine and Steam due to desktop-launch and hooks-configure-fonts. Unaddressed for over 3 years.
qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6
Staleness: 95
Complexity: 65
Confidence: 75
Support Request: 15
needs triage Bug report describing fontconfig failures in apps like Wine and Steam caused by GNOME extension and snap font hooks. Untriaged, zero comments, and no maintainer engagement after over three years.

Update history

Date Change
created

Related work

  • Related To: snapcraft#4257 (confidence 58%)

    Commit 7877ca5bb changed desktop extensions to avoid loading host /etc/fonts/conf.d, but there is no evidence it fixes this Wine or vendored-font failure.

Related issues

No related issues found above the similarity threshold.