Re: [gentoo-user] insane backends

[Philip Webb <purslow@ca.inter.net>]

171030 Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Oct 2017 22:39:31 -0400, Philip Webb wrote:
>> 'sane-backends-1.0.27' just stabilised, so I updated to it.
>> Previously I had selected  4  items from the list in SANE_BACKENDS,
>> which is shown by 'emerge', ie 'epson epson2 plustek plustek_pp'.
>> My scanner is an 'Epson V550 Photo'.
>> 
>> Wanting to test which of the  4  items above was needed, I tried each.
>> Inadvertently, I tried emerging 'sane-backends' with none included
>> & discovered that my scanner still works regardless !
> ISTR that with use_expanded variables like this,
> if you don't set the variable then all options are enabled,
> so you've just built an un-Gentoolike version that works everywhere.

That doesn't matter much beyond compile time, which is not excessive :
Xsane will interrogate the scanner & when it's told it's an Epson V550
it will load the appropriate driver & go from there.
From the point of view of system maintenance,
it's much simpler to let it do that than try to pick out the driver myself.

> You could check this by using qlist
> to see what has been installed with and without SANE_BACKENDS set.

'qlist sane-backends' doesn't show anything like that.

Thanks for the explanation.

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