Source: hplip Severity: wishlist X-Debbugs-Cc: bren...@quantumfurball.net Dear Maintainer,
As I understand it, licensing restrictions mean that the HP plugin, necessary for some printers/scanners (including the MFC I own), cannot be packaged in the ordinary Debian way. Instead, currently, if the Debian hplip packages receive an update, the next time a user attempts to use their printer/scanner they are interrupted until they download and install the latest plugin. This ends up being a nuisance manual process which is asynchronous with the actual change that made it necessary (the package update). Moreover, such an action (choosing to install the plugin package) is arguably not appropriate for the user role, anyway - rather, it is a system administrator question (for which the user may not actually have permission to decide). (It doesn't help that the download is a single point of failure that can be triggered at this later time; see https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/1948555 ...) Why not create a hplip-plugin-installer package (contrib), version-matched to the other hplip packages, which downloads and installs the HP plugin in its postinst? It would solve the primary issue, taking place at the same time as the other hplip packages are updated (and therefore could fail, and be corrected or reverted, all at that time). As a bonus, it would automate most of that nuisance process while allowing the system administrator (rather than random user) to accept (or decline) the installation. Lots of precedent exists for such a package. A cursory search through the contrib section for "download" in the package description brings up many, with notable examples being ttf-mscorefonts-installer, google-android-ndk-installer (and family), the historical (now-defunct) flashplugin-nonfree, and a swarth of firmware blobs. I'm broadly familiar with the Debian packaging process, but not all of the details. Nevertheless, I am technically inclined, and for how many times this nuisance has bitten me I'm willing to help make this suggestion happen however I can. Best, Brendon -- Package-specific info: -- System Information: Debian Release: bookworm/sid APT prefers testing-debug APT policy: (990, 'testing-debug'), (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'unstable'), (100, 'experimental-debug'), (100, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 5.14.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/16 CPU threads) Locale: LANG=en_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_CA:en Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) LSM: AppArmor: enabled -- no debconf information
