[Foo2zjs-maintainer] Architecture-independent files: CRDs and PPDs

[Michael Koch]

Hello Luca,


On Tue, Apr 07, 2009 at 01:20:18AM +0200, Luca Capello wrote:
> Hi there!
> 
> Lintian v2.2.9 shows the following information tag for the latest
> foo2zjs version, i.e. 20090301dfsg-3:
> =====
> I: foo2zjs: arch-dep-package-has-big-usr-share 2700kB 62%
> 
>     The package has a significant amount of architecture-independent
>     data in /usr/share, while it is an architecture-dependent
>     package. This is wasteful of mirror space and bandwidth, as we then
>     end up with multiple copies of this data, one for each architecture.
> 
>     If the data in /usr/share is not architecture-independent, it is a
>     policy violation, and in this case, you should move that data
>     elsewhere.
> 
>     Refer to Debian Developer's Reference section 6.7.5
>     (Architecture-independent data) for details.
> 
>     Severity: wishlist, Certainty: certain
> =====
> 
> The content of /usr/share is:
> =====
> 4.0K    usr/share/foo2slx/icm
> 8.0K    usr/share/foo2slx
> 240K    usr/share/doc/foo2zjs
> 244K    usr/share/doc
> 4.0K    usr/share/foo2hp/icm
> 8.0K    usr/share/foo2hp
> 4.0K    usr/share/foo2zjs/firmware
> 4.0K    usr/share/foo2zjs/tmp
> 4.0K    usr/share/foo2zjs/icm
> 1.8M    usr/share/foo2zjs/crd
> 1.8M    usr/share/foo2zjs
> 132K    usr/share/man/man1
> 136K    usr/share/man
> 8.0K    usr/share/pixmaps
> 4.0K    usr/share/foo2xqx/firmware
> 8.0K    usr/share/foo2xqx
> 4.0K    usr/share/foo2oak/icm
> 8.0K    usr/share/foo2oak
> 4.0K    usr/share/foo2qpdl/icm
> 12K     usr/share/foo2qpdl/crd
> 20K     usr/share/foo2qpdl
> 4.0K    usr/share/foo2hiperc/icm
> 8.0K    usr/share/foo2hiperc
> 396K    usr/share/ppd/foo2zjs
> 400K    usr/share/ppd
> 4.0K    usr/share/foo2lava/icm
> 8.0K    usr/share/foo2lava
> 8.0K    usr/share/applications
> 2.7M    usr/share/
> =====
> 
> Thus, the two most problematic type of files are CRDs and PPDs.
> 
> I think it is clear that the latter should get their own binary package,
> similar to how other PPDs are shipped, e.g. hpijs-ppds or
> openprinting-ppds.  Note that the PPDs included in the foo2zjs driver
> are not distributed by OpenPrinting:
> 
>   http://openprinting.org/show_driver.cgi?driver=foo2zjs
> 
> Now let me go back to the former, thus CRDs files.  First of all, I
> needed to understand what they are: according to Wikipedia, they are
> Color Rendering Dictionaries, target (device) color profiles in
> PostScript documents.  If I have understood correctly, this means that
> each printer should have its own CRD, in a way similar to ICC profiles.
> Thus CRDs as well should get their own binary package.
> 
> Creating the two new binary packages described above strips down the
> size of the foo2zjs binary package to 1MB vs. 1.5MB.  OTOH, the
> installed size is now half of the previous one, 2.1MB vs. 4.3MB.  This
> has two major advantages:
> 
> 1) as lintian suggested, it reduces the disk space and bandwidth
>    required by mirrors (I know disk space is nowadays cheap, but I am of
>    the idea that we should always aim at optimize as best as possible).
> 
> 2) sysadmins can tune their systems in a more finer way (I am one of
>    those people who try to avoid installing stuff that I do not need).
> 
>    NB, the (obvious) fact that the foo2zjs binary package Recommend:
>    foo2zjs-crds and foo2zjs-ppds means that installing foo2zjs will pull
>    in the two other packages, thanks to the APT::Install-Recommends
>    option on by default :-)
> 
> I will commit the changes above this week-end, if no one will complain
> before...

What's the status of this? I will upload 20090301dsg-4 today. I would be great
if you could commit this afterwards.


Cheers,

Michael