Bug#627770: foomatic-db-engine doesn't work with foomatic-db-compressed-ppds
The concept is the following:
The recommended Foomatic setup for end users (and default Foomatic setup
on Ubuntu) is foomatic-db-compressed-ppds and foomatic-rip. The
pre-built and compressed PPD files in foomatic-db-compressed-ppds take
much less space than the Foomatic XML data of foomatic-db and they get
also delivered much more quickly on requests by CUPS than the PPD files
generated from the XML data by foomatic-db-engine on demand.
foomatic-db-engine gets a developer package (like gcc) then. It is only
needed to build compressed PPD repositories from Foomatic XML data, so
it is only needed to build packages.
foomatic-db-engine also makes sense when foomatic-db is not installed,
as in the package build scenario one usually has the Foomatic XML data
from which one builds the PPD files at another than the usual place,
like in the package's source tree or in a temporary directory. This is
the case because one builds from the Foomatic data which the package
ships or one mixes data from foomatic-db with data from the package,
which a package build cannot do in /usr/share/foomatic. To do so, one
sets the environment variable FOOMATICDB pointing to the desired XML
database and then one calls the tools of foomatic-db-engine. Therefore
we only suggest foomatic-db and do not recommend or even require it.
The "Provides: foomatic-db" was added to foomatic-db-compressed-ppds for
the transition of Ubuntu from foomatic-db/foomatic-db-engine to
foomatic-db-compressed-ppds, together with "Conflicts: foomatic-db;
Replaces: foomatic-db".
In the Google Summer of Code another approach of using the OpenPrinting
database (foomatic-db) will get added: The XMLs will be converted to an
SQLite database. This is more flexible than the compressed PPDs as one
can easily modify the data in the SQL databse, but on the other side it
is probably not so compact and fast as the compressed PPDs.
Till
Reply to: