CUPS is the only ebuild that I have seen to require tiff and I have been building cups for years without it just fine. I suggest using the tiff use flag to make it optional. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce:
From the cups docs: "For the image file filters and PostScript RIP, you'll need the JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and ZLIB libraries. CUPS will build without these, but with significantly reduced functionality." Seems to be a strong recommendation for having these installed. Also "tiff" is not a configure option. Probably a case where best practice may be to manage an overlay ebuild and remove the tiff dependency.
since there is no configure option to en/disable tiff support and unless you come up with a patch for it, i'll mark this one as wontfix
Created attachment 58632 [details, diff] Patch to make tiff optional I understand it needs to be allowed to be explicitly disabled because of portage tracking and such. Here is a patch.
attached was a patch, reopening
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe cups will build, as the docs state, just fine without the JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and ZLIB libraries. Instead of patching the cups source why not just remove the media-libs/tiff dependency in the ebuild itself? Then unmerge media-libs/tiff, if necessary, and remerge cups. Again this does seem to be a case where you should just manage your own overlay ebuild and/or pacthset. If the devs want to change it, then it only makes sense that a use flag for all 4 libraries is incorporated, not just for TIFF support. And probably best to default to using them unless they are specifically not requested.
If cups is compiled against any libraries, they HAVE to be in the deps section. If tiff is present it'll link against it, but portage won't know it depends on it, hence the need for DEPEND. Having all 4 use flags IMO would be a little too much. jpeg, zlib, png are pretty common that you would want support for them but tiff is pretty obscure IMO.
This is something to approach the CUPS developers with at cups.org. Ask them to include the patch with a configure option, then the Gentoo devs wont have to maintain a "franken-patch" (my meaning is basically a one off that wont be found in other distros and will change the expected documented behavior of the product) for every new cups release. As for tiff, it's quite popular. I can't imagine a working printing system not supporting it.
i don't see any reason to maintain a patch for cups like this. I will mark this again as WONTFIX. Thanks all.
reopening
Resolve bug with correct resolution. Ron: Please mail the upstream cups developers with this patch and get them to apply it. Can you please notify us when the patch is applied in the cups cvs? It is just too much work for us to maintain this patch in portage and carry it along without having upstream approval, I hope you understand ..
The patch has made it in to the CUPS svn. http://www.cups.org/str.php?L1248