Request for Removal: Unmaintained libppd in Debian
Hi,
I am Till Kamppeter, leader of the OpenPrinting project
(http://www.openprinting.org/). Here we maintain practically everything
printing-related, CUPS, cups-filters, Foomatic, Printer Applications,
... So I am responsible for printing in Linux and similar (POSIX-style)
operating systems.
Recently I have released the second generation of cups-filters:
https://openprinting.github.io/cups-filters-Second-Generation-First-Beta-Release/
https://openprinting.github.io/OpenPrinting-News-November-2022/
One main feature of it is that I have separated the PPD file support
completely out of libcupsfilters and put it into a new library which I
have called libppd (did not know that there already existed a libppd,
see below). I have done this as with CUPS 3.x we are abolishing PPD
files and classic CUPS drivers:
https://openprinting.github.io/current/#the-new-architecture-for-printing-and-scanning
This we call the "New Architecture".
The new cups-filters is also split into separate upstrewam repositories,
so libcupsfilters, libppd, cups-filters, braille-printer-app, and
cups-browsed are independent projects, indpendent source packages.
Now I have started to split the old source Debian package into 5 new
source Debian packages, one being named lbppd and producing the binary
packages libppd2 and libppd-dev (and perhaps some more, like libppd-utils).
In the mean time, before I uploaded anything to Ubuntu, one of our GSoC
2023 candidates has tried to build the new cups-filters 2.x packages
during our selection/onboarding process. They grabbed the source of
cups-filters 2.0b1 right away and tried to fulfill the dependencies by
Debian packages, actually finding a libcupsfilters (the wrong one, it is
1.x) and libppd (the wrong one, this old thingy we come to later here)
and complained that they were not able to build cups-filters.
So I got aware that there was a libppd in the repositories which I did
not know about. So I entered
$ apt info libppd0
and got
Package: libppd0
Version: 2:0.10-8
Priority: optional
Section: universe/libs
Source: libppd
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Original-Maintainer: Christoph Biedl <debian.axhn@manchmal.in-ulm.de>
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Installed-Size: 67.6 kB
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.7)
Homepage:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3800&package_id=11729
Download-Size: 21.7 kB
APT-Sources: http://at.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu kinetic/universe amd64
Packages
Description: postscript PPD file library
PostScript was designed as a device independent language. To be able
to access device specific features like selecting different paper
trays and turning on different imaging models, each printer vendor
supplies a PostScript Printer Definition or PPD file. This library
reads those PPD files and provides functions that allow a program to
modify PostScript print jobs to access these special features.
and as a next step I followed the link under "Homepage:" and this
revealed that this libppd was unmaintained for 20 (!) years, last
touched in 2002!
I have started working as the Linux printing guru since mid-2000 (and
was one of the founders of OpenPrinting in 2001):
https://openprinting.github.io/history/
and in all the time I never, ever heard about this package! No
questions, no bugs, nothing!
So I am very confident that there is nobody using this package and if it
goes away, nobody will complain. If there is actually some other package
using this, it is probably also unmaintained for at least a decade and
nobody uses it.
Therefore I would like to have this package removed, to avoid the name
clash of my libppd with this old, unmaintained package.
Christoph, as you are the Debian maintainer of it, I want to ask you
whether this package has still any use or whether you could invoke the
process of requesting removal of it.
Thanks in advance
Till
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