Fontconfig issues in Java applications that use fonts

I realized I forgot to submit a bug report for this after I posted on

help-guix a while back, and looks like it's still an issue, so... I get

a null pointer exception when attempting to run any Java application

that uses fonts. I've attached an example of the error output I get,

and you can find more info in this thread:

jfred@lambdacrypt ~/Downloads/pcgen$ java -jar pcgen.jar

11:52:16.300 INFO main Main:138 Starting PCGen v6.08.00 RC6

11:52:16.390 INFO main LanguageBundle:134 Initialising language bundle with locale en_US.

11:52:16.631 SEVERE main Main:484 Uncaught error - ignoring

java.lang.InternalError: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException

at java.desktop/sun.font.FontManagerFactory$1.run(Unknown Source)

at java.base/java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Unknown Source)

at java.desktop/sun.font.FontManagerFactory.getInstance(Unknown Source)

at java.desktop/sun.font.FontUtilities.getFontConfigFUIR(Unknown Source)

at java.desktop/javax.swing.plaf.nimbus.NimbusDefaults.<init>(Unknown Source)

at java.desktop/javax.swing.plaf.nimbus.NimbusLookAndFeel.<init>(Unknown Source)

at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)

at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)

at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)

at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstanceWithCaller(Unknown Source)

at java.base/java.lang.reflect.ReflectAccess.newInstance(Unknown Source)

at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.ReflectionFactory.newInstance(Unknown Source)

at java.base/java.lang.Class.newInstance(Unknown Source)

at java.desktop/javax.swing.UIManager.setLookAndFeel(Unknown Source)

at pcgen.gui2.plaf.LookAndFeelManager.setLookAndFeel(LookAndFeelManager.java:231)

at pcgen.gui2.plaf.LookAndFeelManager.initLookAndFeel(LookAndFeelManager.java:151)

at pcgen.system.Main.configureUI(Main.java:273)

at pcgen.system.Main.startupWithGUI(Main.java:228)

at pcgen.system.Main.main(Main.java:157)

Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException

at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)

at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)

at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)

at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstanceWithCaller(Unknown Source)

at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Unknown Source)

... 19 more

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException

at java.desktop/sun.awt.FontConfiguration.getVersion(Unknown Source)

at java.desktop/sun.awt.FontConfiguration.readFontConfigFile(Unknown Source)

at java.desktop/sun.awt.FontConfiguration.init(Unknown Source)

at java.desktop/sun.awt.X11FontManager.createFontConfiguration(Unknown Source)

at java.desktop/sun.font.SunFontManager$2.run(Unknown Source)

at java.base/java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Unknown Source)

at java.desktop/sun.font.SunFontManager.<init>(Unknown Source)

at java.desktop/sun.awt.FcFontManager.<init>(Unknown Source)

at java.desktop/sun.awt.X11FontManager.<init>(Unknown Source)

... 24 more

I faced the issue when running josm (downloaded from

josm.openstreetmap.de, not the guix package). Using "strace" showed me

that it failed because it cannot load "libfontconfig.so" (it tries in

several directories). If I add the directory of libfontconfig.so to

LD_LIBRARY_PATH, then it starts.

I have limited knowledge about how shared libraries are found. I tried

to understand how "geany" manages to load libfontconfig.so. It looks

like it depends on libgeany, libgtk3 and libpango which depend on

libfontconfig. When I do a "readelf -a" on these libraries, I can see in

their "RUNPATH" the path of "libfontconfig.so":

0x000000000000001d (RUNPATH)            Bibliothèque

runpath:[/gnu/store/avjxs6qgyginkiq6qpk9280zakkaj35h-graphite2-1.3.13/lib:/gnu/store/xwl0p4m34bcan0v9vkjkyzwi6znsv4dm-pixman-0.38.4/lib:/gnu/store/y9fdy234r6hqiacd7hgwlmbdsngbp8p1-fontconfig-2.13.1/lib:…

Regarding Java, I think (but I'm not sure) that it's loaded by

"libawt_xawt.so". In fontpath.c [1], there is a dlopen of libfontconfig.

But if I do a "ldd" on the shared library itself, it looks like it does

not depend on libfontconfig.so.

[1]

Also libfontconfig is not on its RUNPATH:

0x000000000000001d (RUNPATH)            Bibliothèque

runpath:[$ORIGIN:/gnu/store/fa6wj5bxkj5ll1d7292a70knmyl7a0cr-glibc-2.31/lib:/gnu/store/01b4w3m6mp55y531kyi1g8shh722kwqm-gcc-7.5.0-lib/lib:/gnu/store/w09mqfj1yy32r2fr02nndzs34m4f9ipp-libxext-1.3.4/lib:/gnu/store/4ildmh169dixyn05mlgjz07x4d2hcq2g-libx11-1.6.A/lib:/gnu/store/8m6368gv4z10n6i31ppbr8nxziwmlp3f-libxrender-0.9.10/lib:/gnu/store/cgsk20z1gcw78fdm7bwlb2l49xh7bmzk-libxtst-1.2.3/lib:/gnu/store/b4dk2y4vf98dhxnr0p6f5h4d86vqndkc-libxi-1.7.10/lib:/gnu/store/01b4w3m6mp55y531kyi1g8shh722kwqm-gcc-7.5.0-lib/lib/gcc/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/7.5.0/../../..]

I'm quite a beginner in term of Guix (I only played with it in a VM),

and I hope this information will be useful to somebody. I don't

understand how the dependencies between executable and libraries are

supposed to be done in Guix. I can see that sometimes in /gnu/store

there are symbolic links of shared libraries into other packages. I

assume that sometimes this RUNPATH is used.

Hi,

Fabien SK <fabsk@free.fr> skribis:

Indeed, all the ‘openjdk’ packages have fontconfig has an input, but

‘guix size openjdk | grep fontconfig’ shows it’s not there, meaning that

nothing actually linked against fontconfig.

Perhaps we should patch this ‘fontpath.c’, with ‘substitute*’, so that

it refers to libfontconfig.so by its absolute file name?

Thanks,

Ludo’.

On Wed, 06 Jan 2021 12:05:54 +0100

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:

We do that for icedtea (i.e. OpenJDK until version 8), but not for

OpenJDK. I applied the same trick for OpenJDK 9 and will no longer get

the NullPointerException.

Let me clean it up a bit and apply it to all later OpenJDKs as well

(might be already done through inheritence, but let me check), then I

will send out a patch.

Björn

On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 10:11:46 +0100

Björn Höfling <bjoern.hoefling@bjoernhoefling.de> wrote:

Patch submitted as:

Björn

Hi Björn

Am Freitag, den 12.02.2021, 00:14 +0100 schrieb Björn Höfling:

Indeed, that it does. At least for 9 and 11, which I've invoked

directly from their store paths.

I've pushed your patches with small changes to the commit messages and

followed up with an indentation fix.

Regards,

Leo

On Fri, 12 Feb 2021 11:52:50 +0100

Leo Prikler <leo.prikler@student.tugraz.at> wrote:

Thanks!

Björn