Bug 117606

presumably this means that cups isn't detecting the printer for some reason.

do you have the cups-backends package installed? I just checked and my brand new
install does not so I presume neither does yours.

This is a Bad Thing(tm) and so someone needs to fix it so this package gets
installed by default.

CCing AJ and Stefan for the selection issue.

cups-backends is in no selection. Adding maintainer of cups-backends. 

I'm not familiar with  gnome-cups-add, but CUPS itself.  
cups-backends isn't needed to detect USB printers, it contains additional backends, which 
come not along with the CUPS package. 
 
Sorry, but my CUPS system detects my Brother USB printer, so I cannot help much here: 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
prompt# /usr/lib/cups/backend/usb 
[...] 
direct usb://Brother/HL-5150D%20series "Brother HL-5150D series" "USB Printer #1" 
[...] 
prompt# rpm -qf /usr/lib/cups/backend/usb 
cups-1.1.23-21 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

the package needs to be included by default regardless or gnome-printer-add
won't be able to know that the prinetr is already configured and so will keep
prompting the user to configure her printer everytime she plugs it in or turns
it on.

the hal backend replaces the usb backend, there's no reason for both to exist.

Very funny... :-)  
A package needs to be in default selection, as soon as the author of a piece of it (but not 
maintainer of the whole work area) says to do so? :-)  
  
Other graphical systems, like KDE, don't react like this if plugin with USB printers is done. 
Even more, they don't care if the user plugs out or in a USB printer and printing is still 
working, even a different USB device node is used. usb backend of CUPS itself doesn't care 
on USB bus layouts, etc. And this most important fact: printing by the usb backend of CUPS 
is working, even after a re-plugin is done. 
==> I don't see any need to have "cups-backend" package in the default selection. It's a to 
specific request from a single subsystem. 
  
I don't see the usb backend replacement given neither. If you insist on dropping such a 
backend, I need to drop the hal backend, as it is only used by "gnome-printer-add", but all 
other software components (admin SW, user SW, etc.) in our system are relaying on a 
working USB backend from CUPS package itself. 
 
The solution from my point of view (but maybe I missed something) 
If your software (=  gnome-printer-add) depends on the "cups-backends" subpackage, then 
add this dependency to the "gnome-printer-add" RPM spec file via the usual requirement 
keyword (= "Requires:"). 

Arguably a complete solution would be:
- make gnome-cups-manager (the package that contains the gnome-printer-add
program) require cups-backend (or, equivalently, something provided by
cups-backend).
- add cups-backend to whatever selections would include gnome-cups-manager ("by
default" is admittedly overkill at this stage).
- add cups-backend to media in future as needed so as not to break
gnome-cups-manager installs.

Orthogonally, other software should probably migrate to HAL in the long term,
but that's outside the scope of this bug.  Once that happens, including the HAL
backend by default might become necessary.

Yes, its outside the scope of this bug, but just want to let you know, what our HAL developers (kernel developers, like Kai Sievers) told me: the abstraction of HAL is done in such way, that the previous USB abstraction still works in the same way as before. Especially no adaption, when migrating to HAL, should be necessary in any code in the upper layers. If there is still any such adaption necessary, its an issue of HAL, which needs to be reported to get fixed.

I already told this Jeff a long time before. I saw his HAL backend only as an extension to the CUPS system (and therefore added it). The long term goal is to keep USB backend. This contains the advantage that our customers can ask public for support, e.g. on CUPS mailing lists, when having problems with backends.

What is the conclusion WRT selection now?

Klaus: It seems odd that we are moving everything else towards HAL except for cups.

No conclusion. Ok. Let me know (reassign), when I should change anything in the selection.

cups-backends should be in the GNOME selection, its in the NLD 10 selection now.  We prefer the hal backend.  gnome-cups-manager now correctly requires cups-backends as a dep.

Which changes are exactly required now for selection of SUSE LINUX 10.1?

Why don't you just add a appropriate Requires: line into the spec file?

This is honored by the package selection, and I already suggest this several months ago.

Klaus, see comment #12, thats what we did.

Stefan, I think we just need to make sure its on the media now and we're good (I think it already is).

> Stefan, I think we just need to make sure its on the media now and we're
> good (I think it already is).

Rudi can take care of this. I'm only maintaining the selections.

Selections and media all taken care of now.