[cups.general] Why is CUPS browsing deprecated?

[Michael Sweet]

On Jul 14, 2011, at 11:02 PM, Johannes Meixner wrote:
> ...
> somehow I did not notice that CUPS browsing is deprecated.

I've been talking about it for a while at the Linux/Open Printing Summits.

> Could you explain some details about it, in particular the reasons behind
> why CUPS browsing is deprecated and if something else should replace it.

CUPS browsing does not play well with Wi-Fi networks (broadcast == run network in slowest possible mode), has usability issues on "unmanaged" networks without DNS or other infrastructure, and has management issues on "managed" networks (where network admins don't like to have regular broadcasts these days...)

Bonjour is the replacement, and we are working on getting Avahi support into the cups.org release so that all platforms can use it out-of-the-box.

> Is there a central documentation on cups.org where future changes
> are listed - in particular incompatible changes - so that CUPS users,
> other software developers (e.g. developers for printing related software
> like printer setup tools and printing stuff in Gnome, KDE, LibreOffice,...),
> and CUPS package maintainers at the Linux distributors could better know
> in advance what changes are planned.


I do yearly CUPS presentations that are archived on openprinting.org, and the roadmap page shows what is on the books at any given time...

________________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair