Installing brlaser CUPS drivers for printing on Apple Silicon Macs and Brother printers

README.md

Installing brlaser CUPS drivers for printing on Apple Silicon Macs and Brother printers

Problem

You own a Mac running MacOS and want to print a document using a Brother printer. You also prefer not to use MacPorts because you have another package manger installed.

Environment

• I used a 2021 Macbook Pro 14" running Sonoma 14.0
• I am using Homebrew as a package manager
• The printer is a Brother DCP-7030

Current solutions

• You can print remotely over Bonjour from the Macbook using the "Generic PostScript Driver" if you have another computer connected to the printer running Linux and with the brlaser driver installed
• You can install the open source brlaser print drivers via MacPorts
  • Link to the MacPorts package, brlaser
  • Link to the MacPorts PortFile for brlaser
• You can install the open source brlaser print drivers manually
  • Link to the brlaser Github project

Build & Install

Prerequisites

You will need a C compiler (clang) and cmake. I installed cmake using homebrew

$ brew install cmake

Clone or download the latest brlaser source code.

$ curl -LO https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser/archive/refs/tags/v6.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf v6.tar.gz

Compile

$ cd brlaser-6
$ cmake .
$ make
$ ppdc brlaser.drv -d ppd

Fun fact: ppdc is deprecated according to its man page

Install

The make install error

Apparently /usr/share is a protected directory for MacOS which causes problems when running sudo make install. Since installation is relatively straightforward, I will just do it manually. If you figure out a better way of doing this just leave a comment and I will update the steps.

$ sudo make install
Password:
[ 41%] Built target rastertobrlaser
[ 58%] Built target test_lest
[ 83%] Built target test_line
[100%] Built target test_block
Install the project...
-- Install configuration: "RelWithDebInfo"
-- Installing: /usr/libexec/cups/filter/rastertobrlaser
-- Installing: /usr/share/cups/drv/brlaser.drv
CMake Error at cmake_install.cmake:67 (file):
  file INSTALL cannot copy file
  "/Users/kktse/src/build/brlaser-6/brlaser.drv" to
  "/usr/share/cups/drv/brlaser.drv": Operation not permitted.

Manual installation

Install rastertobrlaser

$ sudo mv rastertobrlaser /usr/libexec/cups/filter/rastertobrlaser
$ sudo chown root:wheel /usr/libexec/cups/filter/rastertobrlaser

Install PPD files

$ sudo mv ppd/*.ppd /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/
$ sudo chown root:wheel /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/*.ppd

Printer setup

Plug in the printer and select the brlaser6 driver.

You may now celebrate by doing a dance, or putting away your baseball bats.

Unfortunately I didn't manage to make the steps above work for the HL-L1222-V printer :(. When I try to print, the led blinks orange and nothing else happens. Trying the generic driver through CUPS makes it feel like it will work but the pages that went through the printer are blank in the end.

macOS Sequoia 15.2 (24C101)

EDIT: The macOS driver for HL1202 works for the HL-L1222-V.

For me, the macOS driver for the HL-1202, and others, works with the HL-L1222-V, but after a few print jobs it stops printing.

Thanks for documenting this! I think I managed to package it as a Homebrew cask after an afternoon of hacking. Has to be a cask because it requires prompting for sudo (gross).

I was able to do successful test prints from my HL-2300D on my M1 MBP running MacOS Tahoe 26.2.

brew tap ws/brlaser
brew install --cask brlaser

Source code

Thank you! I will try.

Thank you so much!
I could install the driver for an MFC-7460DN with these instructions. I used the br7365dn.ppd which seems very similar to mine (d for duplex, n for network). The resulting ppd file is here: https://gist.github.com/cbertelli/10f3a1434c423d79cf82e44db48a4384. I only changed some strings, but it can be a time saver.