[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#637978: cups: Please add a dpkg trigger to update PPDs on driver upgrades

Tue Aug 16 08:14:51 UTC 2011

Package: cups
Version: 1.4.8-2
Severity: wishlist

Hi dear CUPS maintainers,

I would like cups to implement a dpkg trigger to update it's queues' PPDs on
driver upgrades.

This task is currently implemented (and duplicated) in each printer driver, as
a postinst. See e.g. c2esp, m2300w, foo2zjs, epson-inkjet-printer-escpr, etc.

My initial take to solve this functionality duplication was the creation of a
tiny cupsppupdate script and package (+ dh_* to include it nicely in the
package building processes), that would be launched by each package's
postinst. You can see this on the pkg-printing-tools initial repository:

	http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pkg-printing-tools.git

But now I think this is not the right way to do it. As all drivers are
supposed to be installable even in the absence of CUPS (aka Recommends), the
script (and previously the postinst) checks for the presence and running status
of CUPS, and then goes updating files under /etc/cups/.

This should IMHO be implemented on CUPS's side, as a dpkg trigger: this way,
each time a driver would install or upgrade a file under
/usr/lib/cups/{driver,filter}, CUPS's dpkg-trigger would schedule an update
of its concerned queues' PPDs.

This would greatly reduce the code duplication and put the responsability to
update the CUPS queues on CUPS' shoulders instead of putting it on each
drivers'.

I plan to provide a patch, "soon".

Cheers,

OdyX

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (150, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.0.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_CH.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_CH.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages cups depends on:
ii  adduser                 3.113            add and remove users and groups
ii  bc                      1.06.95-2+b1     The GNU bc arbitrary precision cal
ii  cups-client             1.4.8-2          Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  cups-common             1.4.8-2          Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  cups-ppdc               1.4.8-2          Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]   1.5.41           Debian configuration management sy
ii  ghostscript             9.02~dfsg-3      interpreter for the PostScript lan
ii  libacl1                 2.2.51-3         Access control list shared library
ii  libavahi-client3        0.6.30-5         Avahi client library
ii  libavahi-common3        0.6.30-5         Avahi common library
ii  libc6                   2.13-16          Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libcups2                1.4.8-2          Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libcupscgi1             1.4.8-2          Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libcupsdriver1          1.4.8-2          Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libcupsimage2           1.4.8-2          Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libcupsmime1            1.4.8-2          Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libcupsppdc1            1.4.8-2          Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libdbus-1-3             1.4.14-1         simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libgcc1                 1:4.6.1-6        GCC support library
ii  libgnutls26             2.12.7-6         GNU TLS library - runtime library
ii  libgssapi-krb5-2        1.9.1+dfsg-2     MIT Kerberos runtime libraries - k
ii  libijs-0.35             0.35-7.1         IJS raster image transport protoco
ii  libkrb5-3               1.9.1+dfsg-2     MIT Kerberos runtime libraries
ii  liblcms1                1.19.dfsg-1      Little CMS color management librar
ii  libldap-2.4-2           2.4.25-3         OpenLDAP libraries
ii  libpam0g                1.1.3-2          Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpaper1               1.1.24+nmu1      library for handling paper charact
ii  libpoppler13            0.16.7-2         PDF rendering library
ii  libslp1                 1.2.1-7.8        OpenSLP libraries
ii  libstdc++6              4.6.1-6          GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libusb-0.1-4            2:0.1.12-18      userspace USB programming library
ii  lsb-base                3.2-27           Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  poppler-utils           0.16.7-2         PDF utilities (based on Poppler)
ii  procps                  1:3.2.8-11       /proc file system utilities
ii  ssl-cert                1.0.28           simple debconf wrapper for OpenSSL
ii  ttf-freefont            20100919-1       Freefont Serif, Sans and Mono True
ii  zlib1g                  1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3 compression library - runtime

Versions of packages cups recommends:
ii  avahi-daemon                 0.6.30-5    Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD daemon
ii  cups-driver-gutenprint       5.2.7-2     printer drivers for CUPS
ii  foomatic-filters             4.0.9-1     OpenPrinting printer support - fil
ii  ghostscript-cups             9.02~dfsg-3 interpreter for the PostScript lan

Versions of packages cups suggests:
ii  cups-bsd                 1.4.8-2         Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
pn  cups-pdf                 <none>          (no description available)
ii  foomatic-db-compressed-p 20110803-1      OpenPrinting printer support - Com
ii  hplip                    3.11.5-2        HP Linux Printing and Imaging Syst
ii  smbclient                2:3.5.11~dfsg-1 command-line SMB/CIFS clients for 
ii  udev                     172-1           /dev/ and hotplug management daemo

-- debconf information:
  cupsys/raw-print: true
  cupsys/backend: ipp, lpd, parallel, scsi, serial, socket, usb, snmp, dnssd