[sane-devel] sane-epkowa

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

On Mar 26 15:08 Alesh Slovak wrote (shortened):

>> No. Parts of the epkowa is released binary only for linux - it can't be
>> compiled for MacOS X.
>
> This is incorrect. The epkowa backend is completely free, other than the
> proprietary plugins, but these are provided separately, and are not
> needed for the vast majority of scanners. It should be possible to
> compile it under Mac OS X, but may take a bit of work.
>
> It is the iscan frontend that does, unfortunately, require some binary
> blobs and cannot be compiled for Mac OS X. It would still be possible,
> however, to use the epkowa backend on Mac OS X with other SANE frontends.

Yes, and I make our iscan-free package for openSUSE
by manually removing all proprietary stuff which is
unfortunately included in the source tarball of the software
so that the whole source tarball is tainted by proprietary stuff.

Additionally I have a few patches, e.g. a patch to adapt the man page
(basically remove the models which require proprietary stuff).

Again and again I request here once more that Avasys
provides well separated source tarballs
- one which contains all the free sources
- as many other ones as you like for your proprietary stuff


How I compile our iscan-free package for openSUSE:

I think it is easiest to have a look at the package iscan-free
in our openSUSE build service.
There is a source RPM for openSUSE 10.3 at

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/jsmeix/openSUSE_10.3/src/iscan-free-2.3.0.1-15.6.src.rpm


FYI here some parts of my current RPM spec file:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# How to make Source0:
# Get the matching source from the iscan package (iscan_2.10.0-1.tar.bz2)
# Unpack it:
# tar -xjvf iscan_2.10.0-1.tar.bz2
# Remove only the really non-free files:
# rm iscan-2.10.0/non-free/libesmod-i386*.so iscan-2.10.0/non-free/EAPL.*.txt
# The remaining file filter.hh and the Makefiles are free software.
# The proprietary binary-only i386-only libesmod library is needed only
# to make the /usr/bin/iscan frontend and the EAPL.*.txt license files
# apply only to this libesmod library.
# By using "configure --disable-frontend" it builds without the frontend
# (i.e. without the non-free libesmod library).
# Pack the remaining free sources:
# tar -cjvf iscan-free_2.10.0-1.tar.bz2 iscan-2.10.0/*
Source0:        iscan-free_2.10.0-1.tar.bz2
.
.
.
# By using disable-frontend it builds without the frontend
# (i.e. without the non-free stuff):
./configure --prefix=%{_prefix} \
             --sysconfdir=%{_sysconfdir} \
             --mandir=%{_mandir} \
             --libdir=%{_libdir} \
             --enable-jpeg \
             --enable-png \
             --disable-frontend
make
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note that it is crucial to remove the proprietary stuff first of all
from the sources because otherwise the proprietary sources would
end up in our source RPM which may end up at our customers systems
which may not be happy when whatever kind of non-free stuff
is installed (even if it is "only" non-free sources).
In particular those (usually business) customers who care very much
regarding the licenses of all what is installed on their systems.


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
-- 
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany
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