fontconfig cache creation takes a long time during GIMP startup
Submitted by Michael Schumacher
Assigned to fon..@..op.org
Link to original bug (#101820)
Description
On Microsoft Windows platforms, the first start of an application using fontconfig can be the first time the fontconfig cache is actually created.
For GIMP, we get the occasionally bug report that this takes a very long time on startup, on every DST change (due to how MS Windows reports file modification dates), and sometimes "every time".
We take that last one with several grains of salt, because "every time" may just be "I noticed it the last time I started GIMP, and oops it doesn't happen just now...".
Anyway, in bug https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=782676 there is a description of what is happening to some users upgrading to GIMP 2.8.22 right now - including a copy of the fontconfig cache folder which allows to reproduce the issue.
Maybe someone working on fontconfig can shed some light on the issue, and tells us whether this is an issue in fontconfig, or in the way it is packaged in the GIMP installers, or the way it is used by GIMP?