Bug#852844: lpadmin "-E" parameter does not respect POSIX conventions

[Brian Potkin <claremont102@gmail.com>]

On Fri 27 Jan 2017 at 14:00:43 -0500, Louis-Philippe Véronneau wrote:

> Hi!

Hi, Louis-Philippe. Thank your for your report.
 
> The behavior of the "-E" parameter in lpadmin is not consistent:
> 
> $ lpadmin -E -p Printer_name == Encrypt
> 
> whereas:
> 
> $ lpadmin -p Printer_name -E == Enable printer
> 
> Having the same parameter change completely depending on the order it is
> called is not POSIX compliant:
> 
> *Guideline 11*: The order of different options relative to one another
> should not matter, [...] [1]
> 
> [1]
> http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap12.html#tag_12_02

Please see

 https://lists.cups.org/pipermail/cups/2006-August/038169.html

 > Yeah, sorry.  When we did the push to support encryption in all
 > command-line apps, "-E" was available on all commands except lpadmin,
 > so we just made it position-dependent.  Before -p, -x, or -d, it
 > enables encryption, otherwise it "enables and accepts" a printer.

I am very unsure upstream would relish having to alter all command line
utilities and their documentation. However, that is just my opinion, so
you could sound them out at

 https://github.com/apple/cups/issues

Guideline 11 goes on to say "unless the options are documented as
mutually-exclusive......", which they are in lpadmin(8). The guideline
also has "should not", not "must not".

Regards,

Brian.