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

[Steve Langasek]

On Mon, Nov 12, 2007 at 06:13:21AM +0000, Christian Perrier wrote:
> Quoting Steve Langasek (vorlon at debian.org):
> > A few years back, Samba upstream began using CUPS as the default printing
> > system whenever CUPS support was enabled.  At the time, cupsys was Priority:
> > optional, and lpr as the standard Unix printing interface was Priority:
> > standard (or higher), so I patched the Samba packages in Debian to default
> > to BSD printing instead of CUPS.

> > Today the circumstances have changed.  It seems that lpr was demoted to
> > optional sometime before the etch release, putting it on equal footing with
> > cupsys in that regard, and CUPS itself has IME improved markedly since the
> > time that decision was made (I'm personally still not fond of the
> > implementation, but at least it does a better job of talking to printers for
> > me :).  So I have two questions:

> > - Is there any remaining reason why the Samba maintainers shouldn't drop
> >   this patch, switching to CUPS as the default print system?

> I think that no objections to this was made so we might drop the
> patch. DO you agree, Steve, or should we wait longer for other comments?

> I vote for dropping the patch which is yet another step towards having
> samba in Debian as close as possible as its upstream.

Yes, I think we're ready to make this change.

FYI, I've checked what other config values change when switching from
printing=bsd to printing=cups:

-       print command = lpr -r -P'%p' %s
-       lpq command = lpq -P'%p'
-       lprm command = lprm -P'%p' %j
+       print command =
+       lpq command = %p
+       lprm command =

At this point I'm not sure that these are worth worrying about beyond a
quick note in NEWS.Debian, but I mention them so we can make an informed
decision.

In the meantime I've pulled the cups patch in svn for 3.0.26a-2.  If the
change in behavior is too confusing, I'm sure users will tell us soon.

What do you guys think about whether samba should have a Recommends: cupsys?

Cheers,
-- 
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/