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Re: lsb-printing dropped



Hi Till,

Le lundi, 1 février 2016, 16.06:31 Till Kamppeter a écrit :
> See
> 
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lsb/+bug/1536353

Saw that, yes.

> According to this Ubuntu bug report Debian seems to have dropped the
> LSB compatibility packages, especially the printing part got removed:

I'm answering my 'src:lsb package maintainer hat' here: The 'printing' 
part was not _specifically_ removed. It got removed, as were all other 
compatibility packages removed. With my 'printing Team member hat' on, I 
knew we'd have this discussion, though. :-)

> This breaks the auto-downloadable LSB-based printer driver packages
> from OpenPrinting, which are especially provided by Epson.
> 
> Could we do something about it?
> 
> Could we re-introduce lsb-printing?

(As src:lsb package maintainer), let's get one thing very straight: I'm 
not going to re-introduce the lsb-* packages, not more lsb-printing than 
any other. I've given the rationale in [0,1].

[0] https://lists.debian.org/4526217.myWFlvm1rM@gyllingar
[1] https://lists.debian.org/4682310.7LIWdV4Lar@gyllingar

> Or is there a way to build distribution-independent packages not using
> the LSB?

As mentionned in the rationale mails above (as src:lsb package 
maintainer), I think these compatibility packages were carrying the 
wrong message, and that's why I've removed them. This /de facto/ means 
there's no way to build rpm+deb distribution-independent packages (that 
would work on Debian/Ubuntu) through the lsb-* compatibility packages.

So the short answer to this question above is "no". The longer answer is 
that packages targetted at Debian/Ubuntu (and that is; *.deb packages 
are almost always targetted at Debian, Ubuntu or derivatives of either) 
should have proper dependencies on what they _really_ need. For these 
packages, this probably means "Enhances: cups" and "Depends: libc6 (>= 
$someVersion)". Some of these packages could need an additional 
"Depends: libcups{2,filters1,image2}", which should really be determined 
at build-time by these packages.

Although that's not the direct point behind dropping the lsb-* 
compatibility packages, their disappearance from Debian/Ubuntu can 
certainly be seen as the perfect occasion to set a new standard (as 
"Debian and Ubuntu releases post-2015") for distribution-agnostic *.deb 
packages to depend on.

-- 
Cheers,
    OdyX


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