FC-CACHE(1)

💖 FC-CACHE(1) — the fc-cache girlies' guide 💖

okay so bestie, you know how your apps be opening and fonts just show up? yeah. this is the little icon behind the curtain making that happen. it's fc-cache from the fontconfig crew, and it's literally out here building font information cache files. no cap. ✨

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✨ NAME ✨

fc-cache — build font information cache files 🎀

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

fc-cache [ -EfrsvVh ]  [ --error-on-no-fonts ]  [ --force ]  [ --really-force ]  [  [ -y dir ]  [ --sysroot dir ]  ]  [ --system-only ]  [ --verbose ]  [ --version ]  [ --help ]  [ dir... ]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the tea 💅 — fc-cache scans the font directories on the system and builds font information cache files for applications using fontconfig for their font handling.

if you don't hand it any directory arguments, fc-cache uses each directory in the current font configuration. each directory gets scanned for font files readable by FreeType. then it creates a cache containing properties of each font and the associated filename. that cache is what makes application startup speedy when the app is using the fontconfig library. main character energy fr fr 👑

lowkey important: fc-cache must be executed once per architecture to generate font information customized for that architecture. don't skip this, bestie. 😭

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

this program follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (-). a summary of options is included below. slay:

• -E — Raise an error if there are no fonts in dir or directories in the configuration if not given.
• -f — Force re-generation of apparently up-to-date cache files, overriding the timestamp checking.
• -r — Erase all existing cache files and rescan.
• -s — Only scan system-wide directories, omitting the places located in the user's home directory.
• -v — Display status information while busy.
• -y — Prepend dir to all paths for scanning.
• -h — Show summary of options.
• -V — Show version of the program and exit.
• dir — Directory to scan for fonts.

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🌈 RETURN CODES 🌈

fc-cache returns zero if the caches successfully generated. otherwise non-zero. that's it, that's the whole vibe check. 💜

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• %cachedir%/*-%arch%.cache-%version% — These files are generated by fc-cache and contain maps from file names to font properties. They are read by the fontconfig library at application startup to locate appropriate fonts.

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

fc-cat(1) fc-list(1) fc-match(1) fc-pattern(1) fc-query(1) fc-scan(1)

The fontconfig user's guide <URL:https://fontconfig.pages.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig-user.html>

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💖 AUTHOR 💖

This manual page was written by Keith Packard <keithp@keithp.com> and Josselin Mouette <joss@debian.org>.

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this one's from the fontconfig source, dated Aug 13, 2008 — yeah she's an icon, she's been iconic. go build those caches. periodt. 💅✨