Re: xetex update via tlmgr fails

    ld-elf.so.1: Shared object "libfontconfig.so.1" not found, required
    by "xetex"

XeTeX uses fontconfig as a fundamental part of its design. It can't be
avoided. I don't think you can even feasibly compile xetex from source
without it (without major surgery on the code).

    This is very much a headless, text only system so I'd prefer not to
    install fontconfig if it can be helped.

Even on headless text-only systems, people sometimes want to use system
fonts (much to my dismay, personally).

    And I never use xetex, so if I can just disable it or remove from
    the install that would be a perfect solution, how can I do that?

Presumably yes, but I think it is not easy to do, since so many things
depend on xetex.

The binary itself can be removed with:
  tlmgr -n --force remove xetex # remove -n to do it for real

But I'm not sure what will happen after that, i.e., if the formats that
depend on it will still try to be built. I rather think they will, and
what's actually needed is something like
  tlmgr -n remove collection-xetex csplain ctex xelatex-dev
but I get what look like problems from that too.

Another possibility would be to redo the installation, use "c"
to customize collections, remove the "XeTeX and packages" collection
(option "O", that's "oh"), and then maybe the result will not need xetex
at all.

Maybe you or someone else could experiment with this? I'm out of time
on this today. --thanks, karl.