[sane-devel] making scanbd work OOTB in debian - question about supported backends

[Rolf Leggewie]

Hello,

I am maintaining scanbd in Debian and found scanbd difficult to
configure with lots of possible pitfalls.  As much as possible I want to
make it easy and failproof for the ordinary users to install and use
scanbd OOTB.

One of the things that broke things for me and that were hard to
troubleshoot (I wrote to this ML about it last year) is that the SANE
backend configurations need to be present both in /etc/sane.d and
/etc/scanbd.  This is due to the nature scanbd sits on top of SANE. I
still wonder if scanbd couldn't be made to have an explicit
SANE_BACKEND_CONFIG_DIR in addition to the SANE_CONFIG_DIR?!  That would
eliminate the need for what I am about to explain.

During installation of the binary package, I intend to create links from
all the relevant backends /etc/sane.d/*.conf to /etc/scanbd.  I don't
think all backends have scanner buttons.  I cannot imagine the v4l
backend having scanner buttons (what does it do anyhow?) Same goes for
the test backend.  Would you advise to keep a positive list of which
backends to include in the linking or rather of which ones to exclude
(such as dll.conf which is not a backend configuration at all).

QUESTION: Can anyone point me to which backends have and don't have
scanner buttons?

Regards

Rolf