[cairo] cairo without fontconfig revisited

[cu]

I know this was discussed before, but I don't seem to find a definitive
answer.

In our application we have a few simple text output functions which
essentially use one or two pre-defined fonts, not much configuration
really. At the same time, fontconfig library has been a constant source
of problems (literally 50% of initialization and runtime failures for
our actual users were fontconfig related) and in any case provides no
value to the product.

Is there a way to build cairo without fontconfig and still get some font
functionality (by providing specific font files or somehow loading them
directly and giving cairo a pattern)?

Any help would be appreciated!