[Pkg-cups-devel] RFA: cups -- Common UNIX Printing System

Martin Pitt mpitt at debian.org
Sat Jun 6 12:05:10 UTC 2009


Package: wnpp
Severity: normal

Hello all,

cups is in severe need for a dedicated Debian maintainer. I became an
uploader some years ago for more efficient integration of
improvements/fixes done in Ubuntu, but now I have been the only
uploader for 1.5 years. I cleaned up the patch mess, brought the
package and test suite into a well working state, follow up on RC
bugs, and prepare most security updates; Till Kamppeter is developing
the PDF filters.

However, that's not enough. Neither Till nor I have a Debian unstable
as primary workstation where we could test printing in a real Debian
system, and neither of us has time to look at the Debian bug reports.

Right now, cups has hundreds of bug reports, many of them years old;
many of them were probably fixed long ago, many aren't problems in
cups but some driver (gutenprint, foomatic, ghostscript).

To get the Debian cups bugs into some useful state again, someone who
knows the Linux printing system very well needs to sit down and write
a comprehensive "how to debug printing problems" document: in
particular, how to identify in which package the problem is, which
debug information to collect, and common workarounds/tests which help
the reporter's immediate problem and are useful for diagnosis.

Then we can declare a "bug bancrupcy" and mass-close all bugs which
were filed before the Lenny release, with an honest apology and the
request to re-file bugs again with following the debugging document.
For all newer bugs we can just followup with the debugging document.

On the plus side, cups' upstream Mike Sweet is very responsive. It
takes some dispassionateness to argue with him about patches and
rejected bug reports, but he responds very fast. So the genuine
problems remaining in the Debian BTS should be spoonfed to upstream,
after making sure that it isn't a Debian specific or driver problem.

I'm happy to continue basic package maintenance as pointed out above,
do sponsoring, and mentor interested newcomers. You don't need to be a
DD, but you should have a printer or two, use Debian unstable
regularly, and willing to learn about the printing architecture (cups
spooler, drivers, etc.).

Many thanks in advance,

Martin Pitt

The package description is:
 The Common UNIX Printing System (or CUPS(tm)) is a printing system and
 general replacement for lpd and the like.  It supports the Internet
 Printing Protocol (IPP), and has its own filtering driver model for
 handling various document types.
 .
 This package provides the CUPS scheduler/daemon and related files.
 .
 The terms "Common UNIX Printing System" and "CUPS" are trademarks of
 Easy Software Products (www.easysw.com), and refer to the original
 source packages from which these packages are made.

-- 
Martin Pitt                        | http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)
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