Brother MFC-8870DW printer driver
Today I’ve uploaded my first application to the Arch User Repository (AUR): a printer driver for the Brother MFC-8870DW. I’m afraid it’s possibly the first of many. The first reason why I’ve uploaded it is because it didn’t exist yet. Second, and more importantly, I almost forgot how to install it. I figured it out a week or 2 ago but I lost it due to my own stupidity. For the sake of not forgetting and for having a backup of the pkgbuild, I uploaded it to AUR. In the mean while, other users with the same printer can benefit from it as well.
I found the packaging itself pretty complicated. Brother made the driver only available for debian and red hat based systems. Arch Linux is none of the two. This isn’t a big issue, it’s pretty much an archive of the necessary files. The main problem was that it doesn’t adhere to the packaging standards of Arch Linux. It uses /usr/local paths and arch doesn’t. I had to write a patch that adjusted the paths in all the files that used them. Third problem was that I used it on a 64bit system. It took me a while to realize I had to install a lib32 library. The last problem is that Brother pretty much assumed you used usb to connect the printer. I used the network. In the end it worked out well so I can finally print on it.