Boomaga v3.0.0 Release is incompatible with ghostscript newer than V9.53 (but source was fixed by Pull Request 108, 2022-02-20).

[GaryScottMartin]

My system is a current ArchLinux install with Ghostscript 10.04.0-1 and libpaper 2.2.5-1. Attempting to print from Okular to Boomaga resulted in the following error:

I can't start gs converter: "GPL Ghostscript 10.04.0: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1"

The Boomaga GUI did not appear. Asking Perplexity.ai about how to fix this resulted in six suggestions, including reverting Ghostscript to v9.53.3. After reverting Ghostscript, the print ended with an error message indicating that Ghostscript was unable to load libpaper.so.1. Reverting libpaper to 1.1.28-2 resolved that problem and Boomaga was able to receive the file from Okular and successfully print it.

It appears that Boomaga is compatible with Ghostscript 9.53.3/libpaper.1.1.28, but not with Ghostscript 10.04.0/libpaper 2.2.5.

[Braintoe]

It seems I can confirm this (MX Linux 23.6 KDE), but I wonder if this is a Boomage issue or rather an Okular issue, since Boomaga works nicely if I start it via terminal and load the PDF directly into it.

[GaryScottMartin]

It is a boomaga issue. Boomaga V3.0.0 starts Ghostscript with an option that was deprecated in Ghostscript 9.54. Pull Request 108, fixing the unreleased source, was merged by @SokoloffA on Feb 20, 2022. However, the last tarball was released in 2019, so you must build it yourself from the current source to get the fix. I got the ArchLinux AUR package boomaga-git to build correctly by modifying the package build to increase the minimum cmake version to 3.5.

[DJCrashdummy]

hmmm... it seems that the AUR package boomaga-git was updated to use cmake >=3.5 but i still can't get the Boomaga printer to work (i also removed the printer and added it again because i had boomaga installed previously). the message stays the same as soon as i try to print something: "[Boomaga GUI] ERROR: Can't start boomaga gui."

@GaryScottMartin: do you have an idea how to fix this (again)? ...or have i missed something else?

[GaryScottMartin]

I thought it was still working for me, but it isn't. If I start it from the command line before printing, it does work, but it no longer starts by itself. This is the behavior seen without the 2022 patch (Pull Request 108). The ArchLinux AUR version was updated in August to fix the cmake issue, I am wondering if that change somehow "lost" the patch. If I figure it out, I'll post back here.

[GaryScottMartin]

I could not get either boomaga or boomaga-git to start autonomously. I was getting dbus errors in the CUPS error log. As I said, it would work if I started it from the command line before printing. I was able to get it to work by building it from the GitHub sources. I had to add the 3.5 change to the standard cmake command to get it to make. Here was my process:

git clone https://github.com/Boomaga/boomaga
mkdir -p ./boomaga/build
cd ./boomaga/build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_POLICY_VERSION_MINIMUM=3.5
sudo make install

I am still getting dbus errors, but somehow it starts itself.

[DJCrashdummy]

thanks @GaryScottMartin for the detailed info!

i have to confess that i just tried the packages from the AUR. ...let's see when i got some time left to play around and build it myself. 😬

[GaryScottMartin]

It appears that the dbus service that is supposed to be created for boomaga is not being created in my case. I don't know much about dbus, so I can't say why it might work for some people and not for me. Good luck!