[cups.bugs] [MOD] STR #1403: Cupsaddsmb (as shipped with Debian) does not work with "Cups drivers"

[Alain Knaff]

[STR New]

Cupsaddsmb (as included in Debian) does not work with any of the Cups
drivers (tried 5.0rc3, 1.1.16, 6.0). Btw, 6.0 is rather messy. Unlike for
the other versions, it's not clear what files need to be installed. Maybe
it would work, and I just forgot one item? Wouldn't it be easier if there
was an installer or a tar file which I could just drop into
/usr/share/cups/drivers , like for the other drivers?

Cupsaddsmb works fine with the Adobe driver though. Did not try it with
the Microsoft driver.

As far as I understood, cupsaddsmb has, for each of the 3 drivers, a list
of files to be installed, and if any of the files is missing or called
differently it fails. Now, the cups drivers seems to be in the habit of
changing filenames regularly, meaning that if the exact version
corresponding to cupsaddsmb is not present it won't work.

May I suggest that instead of just supporting "the most recent version",
cupsaddsmb would also support some key past versions (major releases), so
that probability of a successful match is increased?

Conversely, as some distros such as Debian seem to be in the habit of
lagging way behind, would it be possible to keep cups driver versions
around that are needed for these distros? (Although 1.1.16 _should_ be old
enough, it does not seem to work either... Or maybe the naming changed
between 1.1.16 and 1.1.23?). In any case, this cupsaddsmb stuff is way too
confusing for casual use as can be witnessed by the numerous hits found
when googling for debian cupsaddsmb (only bug reports/questions. No
solutions unfortunately)

Link: http://www.cups.org/str.php?L1403
Version: 1.1.23