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debian: fix VS Code crash via Pango 1.56.x fontconfig workaround #14

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mapitman merged 1 commit into from
Mar 15, 2026
Merged

debian: fix VS Code crash via Pango 1.56.x fontconfig workaround #14

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41 changes: 41 additions & 0 deletions debian/install-desktop-packages
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -41,6 +41,47 @@ obs-studio \
pipx \
xclip

# Pango 1.56.x workaround: when FONTCONFIG_FILE is unset (or set to the default
# /etc/fonts/fonts.conf path), Pango's font-loading thread pool hits a stack
# corruption bug processing cache-11 entries for variable fonts (Cascadia Code,
# Fira Code, Cantarell-VF, etc.), causing VS Code and other Electron apps to
# crash silently on startup. The fix is to set FONTCONFIG_FILE to a wrapper
# config that includes fonts.conf rather than pointing directly to fonts.conf.
# This changes which Pango code path is used and avoids the bug.
mkdir -p "$HOME/.config/fontconfig" "$HOME/.config/environment.d"

cat > "$HOME/.config/fontconfig/fonts-pango.conf" << 'EOF'
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<!-- Pango 1.56.x workaround: wrapping fonts.conf here (rather than pointing
FONTCONFIG_FILE directly at /etc/fonts/fonts.conf) prevents a thread-pool
crash in the [pango] fontcon worker when processing variable-font cache-11
entries. Remove once Pango >= 1.57 is available in Debian stable. -->
<fontconfig>
<include>/etc/fonts/fonts.conf</include>
</fontconfig>
EOF

# Activate for future GNOME/systemd user sessions
cat > "$HOME/.config/environment.d/fontconfig.conf" << EOF
FONTCONFIG_FILE=$HOME/.config/fontconfig/fonts-pango.conf
EOF

# Activate for current and future terminal sessions
_fc_comment='# Pango 1.56.x workaround for variable font crash (see ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts-pango.conf)'
_fc_export='export FONTCONFIG_FILE="$HOME/.config/fontconfig/fonts-pango.conf"'
for _rc in "$HOME/.bashrc" "$HOME/.zshrc"; do
if [ -f "$_rc" ] && ! grep -q "FONTCONFIG_FILE" "$_rc"; then
printf '\n%s\n%s\n' "$_fc_comment" "$_fc_export" >> "$_rc"
fi
done
unset _fc_comment _fc_export _rc

export FONTCONFIG_FILE="$HOME/.config/fontconfig/fonts-pango.conf"

# Rebuild fontconfig cache after font package installs
fc-cache -f

# Install Gnome extension tooling and selected extensions
pipx install gnome-extensions-cli --system-site-packages
"$HOME"/.local/bin/gext install clipboard-history@alexsaveau.dev
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