@fthx OK, I was very busy, thanks for reminding me.
We have decided to revert to DEB-package based printing and move the switchover out to Ubuntu 24.10.
We are now already long after Feature Freeze and shortly before User Interface Freeze and the desktop integration has taken longer than expected. Especially also the needs of printer setup tools for the flavors need some additional time. Also GNOME Control Center is undergoing a major UI modernization and we need to merge with it. And for providing the Common Print Dialog backends in Snap, the session D-Bus support in snapd needs to get finally released.
To not do high-impact changes in an LTS we will skip 24.04 LTS and do the switchover in 24.10 at the earliest. For the time being I keep the DEB package as much in sync as possible with Debian’s packages.
I will continue coordinating the desktop integration on the upstream level with my Google-Summer-of-Code contributors and keep in touch with upstream on upcoming conferences (seems that next year I need to also attend Akademy?).
On the Ubuntu side I will concentrate on Ubuntu Core Desktop. This distribution is an immutable all-Snap distribution and requires printing and scanning support via Snap. In addition, it has no flavors (yet) and its first release is not earlier than the 24.04 classic Ubuntu release. So here we have enough time to finish the “Printers” module in GNOME Control Center (and that is all printer setup tool we need), to add CPDB frontend support to the GNOME content provider Snaps, to get the Chromium print dialog CPDB-enabled (perhaps also some others), to assure that Snaps of apps use the desktop portal for printing whenever possible, have the scanning support for Snap (Scanner Applications) ready, having Snap release automation in place …
Then when Ubuntu Core Desktop does its printing and scanning well, we will look into the classic Ubuntu, …
This way we avoid what we have seen with the Firefox Snap in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and @local-optimum’s (in)famous 4 posts on the Ubuntu blog, which should not get followed by 4 posts by me.
But please, have the CUPS Snap in mind and in the time being I am on it and regularly publishing new stuff for testing, in my PPA and naturally also in Ubuntu Core Desktop. I will keep you posted in the OpenPrinting News.
Sorry for the inconvenience with this attempt to launch the switchover and for any disappointment that we will move out the switchover to later.