| authors | sponsors | state |
|---|---|---|
Peter Tribble <[email protected]> |
draft |
The native print system in illumos has received essentially no attention throughout the lifetime of the project. Distributions, by and large, ship CUPS - a modern, supported print system that is also widely used elsewhere.
At this time the native printing components are dead weight, and are potentially blockers for other projects, such as
largely due to the current implementation being purely 32-bit.
The actively supported printing consumer in illumos is the smb stack, which uses CUPS.
A combination of lack of use, lack of maintenance, no 64-bit code, and the presence of a superior alternative, suggests that removal of our implementation would be beneficial.
The current printing implementation foresaw the elimination of the legacy
lp stack and its replacement by CUPS. A print-service command is installed
in /usr/sbin, and the user invoked commands are symbolic links to that binary.
The binary then invokes either the legacy command (installed under /usr/lib/lp)
or the CUPS variant (expected to be installed under /usr/lib/cups).
Invoking the print-service command directly allows an administrator to
switch between different implementations of the print service.
Ultimately, this implies that removing the legacy print service is a flag day for any distribution using this mechanism. An investigation of the current state of distribution printing indicates that:
- OpenIndiana uses the print-service mechanism and would need to rebuild CUPS to install directly under /usr after the native lp print system was removed
- OmniOS ships CUPS separately as part of omnios-extra, but installs it in a non-conflicting path
- SmartOS does not ship a printing system at all, but CUPS is available from pkgsrc
- Tribblix does not use the print-service mechanism and ships CUPS in the regular path; in the next release the native print system will not even be available as an option
A possibility would be to ship just the print-service wrapper, but default it to CUPS.
The following packages (under usr/src/pkg/manifests) would be affected. All content would be removed and the packages marked obsolete.
- print-lp-compatibility-sunos4.p5m
- library-print-open-printing-ipp.p5m
- library-print-open-printing-lpd.p5m
- library-print-open-printing.p5m
This is libpapi. There's also usr/src/man/man3/Intro.3 and usr/src/man/man3lib/libpapi.3lib.
- print-lp-filter-postscript-lp-filter.p5m
- print-lp-ipp-ipp-listener.p5m
- print-lp-ipp-libipp.p5m
- print-lp-print-client-commands.p5m
- print-lp-print-manager-legacy.p5m
- print-lp.p5m
There are some packages that contain print-related files:
- compatibility-ucb.p5m
This has the man pages for the print utilities shipped in print-lp-compatibility-sunos4.p5m.
- consolidation-osnet-osnet-message-files.p5m
- system-trusted.p5m
There are html files really associated with trusted. Given that the auths are only implemented for our print system, not CUPS, we should probably remove these and at least the reference to the html help from auth_attr, if not the actual auths themselves.
There are also print files associated with putting labels on printed files.
This implies the removal of
- usr/src/cmd/print
- usr/src/cmd/lp
- usr/src/lib/print
And man pages
-
cancel.1
-
download.1
-
dpost.1
-
enable.1
-
lp.1
-
lpstat.1
-
postio.1
-
postprint.1
-
postreverse.1
-
lpc.1b
-
lpq.1b
-
lpr.1b
-
lprm.1b
-
lptest.1b
-
printers.5
-
accept.8
-
lpadmin.8
-
lpfilter.8
-
lpforms.8
-
lpget.8
-
lpmove.8
-
lpsched.8
-
lpset.8
-
lpshut.8
-
lpsystem.8
-
lpusers.8
And references exist in
- nsswitch.conf.5
There are a couple of - very old - existing bugs that suggest the removal of the native printing stack
And some preparatory work has already removed the old java printmgr gui
Should printer support be removed from nsswitch?