[Printing-architecture] Status of distribution-independent driver
packages/LSB DDK
Till Kamppeter
till.kamppeter at gmail.com
Wed Apr 4 03:40:30 PDT 2007
Hi,
here is an update on the distribution-independent driver packages and
the LSB DDK.
As I probably already reported on earlier telecons the API for querying
driver packages and related driver info is up and running:
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/Database/Query
To be able to create and test distribution-independent driver packages
the LSB DDK is needed. It consists of the following components:
- LSB Build Environment (supplied by LSB, for current work version 3.1.1
is used)
- CUPS (created a distribution-independent CUPS 1.2.10 package, which
installs in LSB Build Environment - DONE)
- GhostScript (created a distribution-independent ESP GhostScript 8.15.4
package, which installs in LSB Build Environment - DONE)
- foomatic-filters (TO DO)
- RPM macro set for maintainer scripts. Due to several missing
facilities in the LSB which are needed to easily implement system
tool/component packages the maintainer scripts (pre/post (un)install
scripts) get very awkward. To make it easy for driver authors and
printer manufacturers to supply correct maintainer scripts in their
packages I plan to create appropriate RPM macros. I also reported on
the lsb-discuss mailing list that system config features are missing
in the LSB.
In addition, a little change is needed in the printing requirements of
the LSB 3.2:
Distribution maintainers (Red Hat, Ubuntu) complained about that the
CUPS package requires directories in and links into /opt and /usr/local.
Therefore I decided to let all distribution-independent driver packages
work as follows:
- Install all files into /opt/<supplier> according to FHS requirements
for applications.
- Let the PPD directory of the driver package get symlinked into
/usr/share/ppd by the packages maintainer scripts
- Let the maintainer script also do additional tasks like symlinking
CUPS backends into the appropriate directories and add directories with
printer maintenance tools (ink levels, nozzle cleaning, ...) to the path.
The directory requirements for LSB 3.2 reduce then to have
/usr/share/ppd/<supplier>
as PPD search directory.
Example for a distribution-independent driver package:
http://openprinting.org/show_driver.cgi?driver=gutenprint
Examples for the awkward maintainer scripts:
http://www.linuxprinting.org/download/printdriver/SPECS/cups.spec
http://www.linuxprinting.org/download/printdriver/SPECS/ghostscript.spec
http://www.linuxprinting.org/download/printdriver/SPECS/gutenprint.spec
Till
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