plustek: what goes where?
Subject:
Re: what goes where?
From:
"Jaeger, Gerhard" ####@####.####
Date:
30 Mar 2001 06:57:23 -0000
Message-Id: <01033009012101.00501@gja>
Hi Robert,
here are a few things about the driver stuff:
The "driver" consists of two parts:
The backend-part, which is the interface to SANE.
The module-part, which controls the scanner. This one is a kernel-module
and is OS+Hardware dependent.
The development started in January 2000, at this time SANE 1.0.1 was the
current release. I started integrating the backend part in May 2000 and
the backend became part of SANE 1.0.3. This means all SANE versions prior
to 1.0.3 didn't contain the plustek backend.
To communicate with the module, the backend uses IOCTL calls. So it
is necessary, that both parts use compatible structures when transfering
information from or to the module - OKAY. To make this "waterproof", I
introduced a kind of version information. This will be checked on each open()
call to the device driver (the module!). This version will be changed, when
the interface changed (it should be stable now!). Now you can see, that the
module will work only with specific backends. Currently there are two different
versions for the IOCTL call: one is comming with the 0.36 driver and the other
one with the 0.37/0.38 ones.
Now to the SANE versions:
SANE 1.0.3 contains the plustek-backend code 0.36 and so it works only
with module 0.36.
SANE 1.0.3 contains the backend code 0.37 and will work with modules 0.37 and
0.38.
This means, whenever you install the binary version of SANE 1.0.3 (rpm or debian
package stuff), you need at least to fetch the plustek-module-0.36.tgz tarball
and simply install this one. For SANE 1.0.4 binaries you nedd the
plustek-module-0.37.tgz...
If you like to compile the entire SANE package, the you should use the
plustek-sane...tgz tar ball. This one contais patched SANE makefiles and
the backend code. You MUST unpack them always in the sane-1.0.3 or
sane-backends-1.0.4 directory. (The guys at SANE decided to split the
SANE stuff into backends and frontends, that's why they changed the naming!!!)
After unpacking the plustek part, do the configure step, then make ....
This builds the SANE stuff and the backends.
Hope this enlightens you ;-)
Gerhard
On Don, 29 Mär 2001, Robert Voigt wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I already spent hours and hours reading the scattered docs but I still
> can't figure out what packages I need and where I put them and how I
> compile them. (I'm not new to Linux, I expect certain conventions, they
> seem to be absent in this project and that's confusing me.)
>
> I downloaded the sane-backends-1.0.4 sources. Do I need
> plustek-module-0_37_23.tar.gz or plustek-sane-0_37_23.tar.gz ? This is
> nor clear from what I've read.
>
> And where do I put that package? In sane-backends-1.0.4 or
> sane-backends-1.0.4/backend?
>
> Does it build with sane automatically or do i have to type configure and
> make separetely?
>
> I'd rather use the Debian packages of sane from my CD set. That's
> version 1.0.1. There doesn't seem to be a way to compile the plustek
> driver for the pre-installed package, or is there? If yes, where do I
> put what and what do I type where?
>
> I could also try to install the latest Debian packages of sane (1.0.4).
> How would that be?
>
> Robert
