Re: priorities (was: Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?)
On Fri, Dec 07, 2007 at 12:01:43AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Kind of reviving an old thread, but anyway: It also includes, but afaics, probably doesn't need to (anymore): ispell, dictionaries-common, iamerican, ibritish, wamerican #416572: ibritish: Should not have priority standard Only wamerican was originally intended for standard, because former wamerican maintainer considered that a basic english wordlist should be present in a system. dictionaries-common is standard only because is needed by wamerican. I have been thinking at various ways to lower the standard size, but am still undecided about the best choice, if wamerican is to remain standard. a) Splitting a new 'dictionaries-common-base' package containing things meant only for wordlists (and so for wamerican) and some things that are better here for simplicity. b) Having a wamerican-standard package that is the same as normal wamerican, but without the dictionaries-common integration stuff. With proper conflicts/provides wamerican would replace it as soon as another wordlist or an ispell/myspell/aspell dict is installed. Still need to make some tests about this. -- Agustin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
priorities (was: Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?)
Kind of reviving an old thread, but anyway: On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 07:12:35PM +0100, Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote: I believe it to be one of the more important bits of a standard Unix *desktop* installation - but this just reminds me of the fact that I'm quite uncomfortable with keeping a system like package priorities around for much longer. Diverging use-cases (like in this case) show that one definition of standard isn't really helpful anymore. Haven't we more or less already moved away from priorities as meaning anything particularly important? We have: required/essential -- stuff that can't be removed: libc, dpkg, etc important -- the rest of base, stuff necessary to bootstrap and recover a usable and useful system standard -- a minimal collection of useful stuff we'd like to see on every Debian system optional -- all the good software in the world extra -- obscure stuff All the really important questions are which bits of optional (and occassionally extra) are useful for a given user. I'm not sure if there's any point to continuing to try to make sure that nothing = optional conflicts with anything else = optional. I think we may want to start thinking about getting rid of the whole thing and switching to something which allows us to express more complex importance measurements for packages. In fact, d-i and its task system have been a step in that direction, so we maybe should evaluate if we want to formalize it a bit more and get it into policy to replace priorities. required and important are both needed by debootstrap, so can't be gotten rid of (though they could be changed to use some other field/name). Priority: standard currently contains: at, bc, dc, lsof, file, less, sharutils, strace dnsutils, ftp, host, ssh, mtr-tiny, finger, w3m, whois doc-debian, doc-linux-text exim, mailx, mutt, procmail, mime-support, mpack gettext-base, locales pciutils perl (not just perl-base), python reportbug selinux policy That seems a pretty reasonable set of functionality to put on all Debian boxes (unless the admin specifically says otherwise), afaics. It might be sensible to replace ftp with lftp these days, though. And I'm not sure what happened to the exim v postfix defaults discussion a little while ago, and maybe procmail/mpack aren't all that necessary. It also includes, but afaics, probably doesn't need to (anymore): ispell, dictionaries-common, iamerican, ibritish, wamerican m4, texinfo (???) mtools (access unmounted msdos filesystems, not NTFS though) nfs-common, portmap (enables mounting NFS shares) pidentd (is IDENT still used on today's internet, with all its NAT?) openbsd-inetd (needed by pidentd) tcsh (people who remember what it is know how to install it) time (???) telnet (netcat is important, as is wget) But as far as default installs for anything of any real meaning, I just don't see Priorities as being relevant anymore. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 07:12:35PM +0100, Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote:
Russ Allbery [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Also, do we really need *any* printing system as priority: standard? It's
not clear to me that printing is still really part of a standard Unix
installation, even for desktop users (and it definitely isn't for
servers).
I believe it to be one of the more important bits of a standard Unix
*desktop* installation - but this just reminds me of the fact that I'm
quite uncomfortable with keeping a system like package priorities around
for much longer. Diverging use-cases (like in this case) show that one
definition of standard isn't really helpful anymore.
Well, sure it is; it defines the lowest common denominator that we think
should be installed by default on all systems. Just because it may be
difficult to decide what that is doesn't make standard irrelevant, because
we still /do/ have to decide what we're going to install by default. :)
Yes, but our current framework makes the decision more complex than it
needs to be: What we kick out from standard is either in the (gigantic)
desktop task or not installed at all anymore. Having a
standard-{desktop,server,...} task would make it easier.
I think we may want to start thinking about getting rid of the whole
thing and switching to something which allows us to express more complex
importance measurements for packages. In fact, d-i and its task system
have been a step in that direction, so we maybe should evaluate if we
want to formalize it a bit more and get it into policy to replace
priorities.
The d-i task system looks at the Priority: standard packages to assemble the
standard task...
Sure, but it also provides tasks that split up optional and extra into
manageable chunks. The need for that is not disputed, simply because of
the number of packages that are standard. I just believe that the
number of candidates for standard has increased enough to make it
reasonable to apply a similar split.
Most people have no idea what the actual difference between extra and
optional is supposed to be, in fact, most people only work with two
priorities: standard and !standard.
Marc
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Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 07:12:35PM +0100, Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote: Russ Allbery [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Also, do we really need *any* printing system as priority: standard? It's not clear to me that printing is still really part of a standard Unix installation, even for desktop users (and it definitely isn't for servers). I believe it to be one of the more important bits of a standard Unix *desktop* installation - but this just reminds me of the fact that I'm quite uncomfortable with keeping a system like package priorities around for much longer. Diverging use-cases (like in this case) show that one definition of standard isn't really helpful anymore. Well, sure it is; it defines the lowest common denominator that we think should be installed by default on all systems. Just because it may be difficult to decide what that is doesn't make standard irrelevant, because we still /do/ have to decide what we're going to install by default. :) I think we may want to start thinking about getting rid of the whole thing and switching to something which allows us to express more complex importance measurements for packages. In fact, d-i and its task system have been a step in that direction, so we maybe should evaluate if we want to formalize it a bit more and get it into policy to replace priorities. The d-i task system looks at the Priority: standard packages to assemble the standard task... -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
Le lundi 12 novembre 2007 à 12:08 -0800, Steve Langasek a écrit : I'm assuming that re-raising the priority of lpr is not a reasonable means of addressing this, since that's now a completely separate printing implementation than the one used by default on the desktop now and AFAICS it ^^ doesn't make sense to use two different defaults for these purposes. I should add that it's not only a default anymore. Since GTK+ 2.12 (maybe 2.10 ?) printers made available through lpr aren't even displayed in the print dialog box, and you need to change your gtkrc if you want to see them. -- .''`. : :' : We are debian.org. Lower your prices, surrender your code. `. `' We will add your hardware and software distinctiveness to `-our own. Resistance is futile. signature.asc Description: Ceci est une partie de message numériquement signée
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
Russ Allbery wrote: Bernd Zeimetz [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Not sure if anybody is still using the old BSD printing stuff - at least I can't see any reason why it should have a higher priority than optional. I am. It's simple and it works, and CUPS seems ridiculously bloated for the only printing need I have (printing PostScript files to a network printer). In theory that's all I need, too - and our printers support it. But they also support to print from 6 different trays and a _lot_ of other settings - and that's the point where you need a ppd file. Luckily OSX uses cups, too, so often you're able to get good ppds from the producer, at least for the more expensive models. Using them was very painless so far - it just works. -- Bernd Zeimetz [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bzed.de/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
Manoj Srivastava wrote: Way back when, “standard” was defined as stuff that an old UNIX hand would say “WTF happened to that?” if it is not present on a default install. While I am unsure of this definition of standard still holds, but as an old UNIX hand I can say that if I am on a UNIX like machine, and I can't just say lpr foo.txt and have it printed on the default printer, I would find the system deficient and un-UNIX like. That works well with cups if you have the cupsys-bsd package installed. -- Bernd Zeimetz [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bzed.de/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 09:21:46AM +0100, Bernd Zeimetz wrote: Manoj Srivastava wrote: [lpr is standard on Unix] That works well with cups if you have the cupsys-bsd package installed. More importantly, programs (gv comes to mind) that don't have native printing support but use an external program almost always use lpr, not lp. (I can think of at most one that used lp, and numerous ones that used lpr.) So if we use CUPS as the default printing package, we almost certainly need the BSD utilities installed as well. -- brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US +1 713 440 7475 | http://crustytoothpaste.ath.cx/~bmc | My opinion only a typesetting engine: http://crustytoothpaste.ath.cx/~bmc/code/thwack OpenPGP: RSA v4 4096b 88AC E9B2 9196 305B A994 7552 F1BA 225C 0223 B187 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
Russ Allbery [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Also, do we really need *any* printing system as priority: standard? It's not clear to me that printing is still really part of a standard Unix installation, even for desktop users (and it definitely isn't for servers). I believe it to be one of the more important bits of a standard Unix *desktop* installation - but this just reminds me of the fact that I'm quite uncomfortable with keeping a system like package priorities around for much longer. Diverging use-cases (like in this case) show that one definition of standard isn't really helpful anymore. I think we may want to start thinking about getting rid of the whole thing and switching to something which allows us to express more complex importance measurements for packages. In fact, d-i and its task system have been a step in that direction, so we maybe should evaluate if we want to formalize it a bit more and get it into policy to replace priorities. Marc -- BOFH #4: static from nylon underwear pgpqsyucbj3TQ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
[not subscribed to -policy, just keeping original cross-posting] Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote: I think we may want to start thinking about getting rid of the whole thing and switching to something which allows us to express more complex importance measurements for packages. In fact, d-i and its task system have been a step in that direction, so we maybe should evaluate if we want to formalize it a bit more and get it into policy to replace priorities. Seconded. A use-case based priority system is clearly - IMHO - a better suited system then the Priority: paradigm for a distribution as broad reaching as Debian. Whether by extending the tasks system, the Priority paradigm (by perhaps including a [use-case] tag, for instance: Priority: standard [!embeded]) or another wholly different approach, this seems like a worthwhile idea. One of the possible advantages for a different paradigm would be for reduced CDDs, such as Emdebian, whose standard set of packages might divert considerably by having _less_ packages, in which case the current task system would fall short, AFAICT. Cheers -- Leo costela Antunes [insert a witty retort here] signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 01:05:36AM -0500, Joey Hess wrote: Yes, it would make more sense for samba to default to CUPS, if there's some reason it can't probe/support both, Well, because there's no code written to do this, and anyway supporting both at the same time would likely be messy and result in duplicate queues. (Note that one of the reasons Samba needs to know what print system is in use is in order to export the list of available queues over SMB if configured to do so.) and if it can't use the generic lpr interface also provided by cupsys. The cupsys lpr interface is only available with the cupsys-bsd package, which is Priority: extra and is not likely to be installed unless specifically requested. So if CUPS is preferred, it's more straightforward to just use the native CUPS support. I'll make this change to the Samba packages for lenny, after verifying whether any special handling is needed for transitioning. Yes, there's no reason to have any printing system at standard priority. A full CUPS install with all the PPDs and such would bloat standard enormously. I don't agree that making CUPS standard implies also making all of the PPDs standard (AFAICS cupsys only Recommends foomatic-filters and doesn't depend on any PPDs at all), but I'm not bothered if CUPS doesn't become standard either; just thought the question was worth asking. Just making cupsys standard would perhaps allow spooling to remote printers from the command line, but not much else. d-i makes it easy enough to get CUPS installed. Indeed, I seem to have it already installed even in places where I didn't want it. ;) -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
On Sat, Nov 10, 2007 at 09:42:52PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: - Should we consider raising the priority of cupsys to standard, to take the place of lpr as an available-by-default printing system on stock installs? The last time I looked at CUPS, it was massively more complicated than lpr and involved dubious things like running daemons that listened on network ports for user configuration. Is that still the case? CUPS still supports configuration via the web interface on port 631, yes; by default the daemon only listens on localhost, though, and there are other config tools that don't rely on the web interface for managing printers/queues in a desktop setting. It is more complicated than lpr, for sure. That's a big reason why I don't particularly care for the implementation. Nevertheless, CUPS has effectively won out as the standard printing service on Linux. Also, do we really need *any* printing system as priority: standard? It's not clear to me that printing is still really part of a standard Unix installation, even for desktop users (and it definitely isn't for servers). Perhaps not. It did seem to me like something that we would want available by default, and that would in any case be consistent with past practice. After all, this isn't so much a question of installing a print server task, the cupsys package is these days the package most users will want installed even for local printing. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Pkg-samba-maint] RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
Quoting Steve Langasek ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): A few years back, Samba upstream began using CUPS as the default printing system whenever CUPS support was enabled. At the time, cupsys was Priority: optional, and lpr as the standard Unix printing interface was Priority: standard (or higher), so I patched the Samba packages in Debian to default to BSD printing instead of CUPS. Today the circumstances have changed. It seems that lpr was demoted to optional sometime before the etch release, putting it on equal footing with cupsys in that regard, and CUPS itself has IME improved markedly since the time that decision was made (I'm personally still not fond of the implementation, but at least it does a better job of talking to printers for me :). So I have two questions: - Is there any remaining reason why the Samba maintainers shouldn't drop this patch, switching to CUPS as the default print system? I think that no objections to this was made so we might drop the patch. DO you agree, Steve, or should we wait longer for other comments? I vote for dropping the patch which is yet another step towards having samba in Debian as close as possible as its upstream. - Should we consider raising the priority of cupsys to standard, to take the place of lpr as an available-by-default printing system on stock installs? Here, we clearly don't seem to have any consensus, but anyway, *this* is not in samba maintainers hands, of course. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
A few years back, Samba upstream began using CUPS as the default printing system whenever CUPS support was enabled. At the time, cupsys was Priority: optional, and lpr as the standard Unix printing interface was Priority: standard (or higher), so I patched the Samba packages in Debian to default to BSD printing instead of CUPS. Today the circumstances have changed. It seems that lpr was demoted to optional sometime before the etch release, putting it on equal footing with cupsys in that regard, and CUPS itself has IME improved markedly since the time that decision was made (I'm personally still not fond of the implementation, but at least it does a better job of talking to printers for me :). So I have two questions: - Is there any remaining reason why the Samba maintainers shouldn't drop this patch, switching to CUPS as the default print system? - Should we consider raising the priority of cupsys to standard, to take the place of lpr as an available-by-default printing system on stock installs? Cheers, -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
I don't have any objections to Samba switching, but for the rest: Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: - Should we consider raising the priority of cupsys to standard, to take the place of lpr as an available-by-default printing system on stock installs? The last time I looked at CUPS, it was massively more complicated than lpr and involved dubious things like running daemons that listened on network ports for user configuration. Is that still the case? Also, do we really need *any* printing system as priority: standard? It's not clear to me that printing is still really part of a standard Unix installation, even for desktop users (and it definitely isn't for servers). -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
lpr's standard priority nonwithstanding, CUPS has been the default print system in Debian -- if you select the desktop or print server tasks -- for at least the last two releases. This is why popcon shows 5000 lpr installations to 45000 cupsys installations. Yes, it would make more sense for samba to default to CUPS, if there's some reason it can't probe/support both, and if it can't use the generic lpr interface also provided by cupsys. Yes, there's no reason to have any printing system at standard priority. A full CUPS install with all the PPDs and such would bloat standard enormously. Just making cupsys standard would perhaps allow spooling to remote printers from the command line, but not much else. d-i makes it easy enough to get CUPS installed. -- see shy jo signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
Russ Allbery wrote: Also, do we really need *any* printing system as priority: standard? It's not clear to me that printing is still really part of a standard Unix installation, even for desktop users (and it definitely isn't for servers). I'd guess most Desktop installations have a printing system installed, just because you need it if you want to print. Cups works very well for that these days as it is able to detect the printers which are shared by other cups installations in the network. If you're not 'living' in a network with an administrated cups server, adding/configuring printers is - for example - possible from the KDE Control Center. You can still configure cups on http://localhost:631 - but as far as I can tell there's no need to use the webinterface anymore. For servers a printing system doesn't make sense, especially if it does more than listening on a local port. As far as I know the default setting of cups is to broadcast, looking for other printers in all networks. I'd definitely want to avoid that on a server. Not sure if anybody is still using the old BSD printing stuff - at least I can't see any reason why it should have a higher priority than optional. Cheers, Bernd -- Bernd Zeimetz [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bzed.de/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
Bernd Zeimetz [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Not sure if anybody is still using the old BSD printing stuff - at least I can't see any reason why it should have a higher priority than optional. I am. It's simple and it works, and CUPS seems ridiculously bloated for the only printing need I have (printing PostScript files to a network printer). However, I can certainly agree that it's a difficult choice for the average user for a locally attached printer due to the difficulty of configuration and handling of printer drivers. -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RFC: cups as default printing system for lenny?
On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 21:42:52 -0800, Russ Allbery [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Also, do we really need *any* printing system as priority: standard? It's not clear to me that printing is still really part of a standard Unix installation, even for desktop users (and it definitely isn't for servers). Way back when, “standard” was defined as stuff that an old UNIX hand would say “WTF happened to that?” if it is not present on a default install. While I am unsure of this definition of standard still holds, but as an old UNIX hand I can say that if I am on a UNIX like machine, and I can't just say lpr foo.txt and have it printed on the default printer, I would find the system deficient and un-UNIX like. How the printing occurs is not significant, as long as it can. manoj -- Why does a ship carry cargo and a truck carry shipments? Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
