Re: [Printing-architecture] resend notes from last week

[Michael Sweet <mike@easysw.com>]

Till Kamppeter wrote:
> Wendy Phillips wrote:
>> Apparently, this didn't go out to the alias; could be that I fumbled
>> it on the keyboard. So here tis again ...
>>
>> I have purposely not included the follow-on discussions about fhs standard;
>> this is a summary of the meeting as it occurred.
>>
>> -Wendy
>>
>> 1. Installation path for ppd files
>>
>>          /usr/share/ppd/<supplier>/<manufacturer>/
>>
>> 2. PPD file naming convention
>>
>>          <MFGString>-<MDLString>-<driver>-<language>.ppd
>>
>> 3. Installation path for print drivers
>>
>>          /usr/lib/printdrivers/<supplier>
>>
>>          The contents of this directory are entirely determine
>>          by the supplier. The path to a driver is found by using
>>          an absolute path in the ppd file.
>>
> 
> Paths in /usr to accomodate 3rd-party software do not comply the FHS
> standard. Therefore alternative paths were suggested in other threads.
> But note that CUPS violates FHS, too, as CUPS requires drivers in
> /usr/lib/cups/filter.

Bzzzt, wrong.

The separation of /usr, /usr/local, and /opt/vendor does not apply
since CUPS provides a core OS function - printing.  If you installed
CUPS in /opt/cups (or like *BSD does, in /usr/local), you'd quickly
find out that a LOT of software expects lp, lpr, etc. in /usr,
leading to VERY frustrated users.  Moreover, the LSB requires the
print commands in /usr, and FHS and LSB are pretty closely tied
together.

That said, nothing would prevent you from making symlinks everywhere,
and Red Hat (at least) did this for a while to allow both LPRng and
CUPS to coexist, but that goes against the intent of /usr being used
as a shared (read-only) filesystem among multiple systems and is just
plain fragile...

The CUPS build system accommodates almost any directory organization,
and if you stick with using --prefix you'll end up with /usr,
/usr/local, or /opt/foo directory structures that follow the FHS
exactly.  You can also relocate individual pieces (like putting
ServerBin in /opt/cups/bin, DataDir in /opt/cups/share, etc.),
but again you will need to do symlinks to preserve compatibility.

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Internet Printing and Document Software          http://www.easysw.com