[Pkg-samba-maint] RFC: cups as "default" printing system for lenny?

[Steve Langasek]

On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 01:05:36AM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:
> Yes, it would make more sense for samba to default to CUPS, if there's
> some reason it can't probe/support both,

Well, because there's no code written to do this, and anyway supporting both
at the same time would likely be messy and result in duplicate queues.
(Note that one of the reasons Samba needs to know what print system is in
use is in order to export the list of available queues over SMB if
configured to do so.)

> and if it can't use the generic lpr interface also provided by cupsys.

The cupsys lpr interface is only available with the cupsys-bsd package,
which is Priority: extra and is not likely to be installed unless
specifically requested.  So if CUPS is preferred, it's more straightforward
to just use the native CUPS support.

I'll make this change to the Samba packages for lenny, after verifying
whether any special handling is needed for transitioning.

> Yes, there's no reason to have any printing system at standard priority.
> A full CUPS install with all the PPDs and such would bloat standard
> enormously.

I don't agree that making CUPS standard implies also making all of the PPDs
standard (AFAICS cupsys only Recommends foomatic-filters and doesn't depend
on any PPDs at all), but I'm not bothered if CUPS doesn't become standard
either; just thought the question was worth asking.

> Just making cupsys standard would perhaps allow spooling to remote
> printers from the command line, but not much else. d-i makes it easy
> enough to get CUPS installed.

Indeed, I seem to have it already installed even in places where I didn't
want it. ;)

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon at debian.org                                   http://www.debian.org/