[sane-devel] Preparing for a sane-backends release

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Hi Johannes,

Johannes Meixner writes:

> Hello Olaf
>
> On Sep 12 17:30 Olaf Meeuwissen wrote (excerpt):
>> Johannes Meixner writes:
> ...
>>> I wonder if support for parallel port scanners is still needed?
>>
>> Me wonders too.
> ...
>> You could build your SANE library packages without the backends
>> for parallel scanners and see how many bug reports you get.
>
> I think I will do this.

Good.  Just keep sane-devel informed ;-)

> Reason:
>
> Since May 19 2015 I had disabled build for parallel port for
> our HPLIP package (HP's printer and scanner drivers) and
> up to now I did not get a single question or complaint from
> openSUSE Tumbleweed users - Tumbleweed is a rolling release, see
> https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Tumbleweed
>
> In openSUSE 13.2 our HPLIP package has parallel port support.
>
> I assume that openSUSE Tumbleweed users are not too different
> compared to openSUSE 13.2 users regarding what kind of
> scanners they use so that in the end I assume nobody would
> complain when parallel port scanners are no longer supported.

Scanners don't use ink (but some may need non-empty cartridges in order
to scan nevertheless).  That means that they tend to stay around for a
fair bit longer than printers.

That notwithstanding, give it a try and let sane-devel know how things
go/went.  We haven't had any people here yet that got alarmed about me
wondering about dropping it ;-)  SCSI is another matter.

>>> As a first step parallel port scanner drivers could be
>>> no longer built by default e.g. via something like
>>>    configure --without-parport
>>> by default.
>>
>> Having such an option would make the above a lot easier.
>
> I think when there is not yet such an option it is not really
> needed to introduce it now for something that will be sooner
> or later completely dropped.

Thanks.  I changed that from TODO to DONT on my list ;-)
-- 
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2            FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
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