https://github.com/Kuberwastaken/hp-laser-1008a-macos
Previous context I shared on X:
"Also some clarification on the "he's just using the linux driver in the VM" - not quite
This is one of the weirdest batch of printers HP made because it's a rebranded Samsung - it "comes" under HP's unified drivers system but specifically has Samsung's printer language so compatibility is extremely messy.
What this version does is take the Linux Unified Driver and extract just the relevant component, rastertospl, basically the codec that turns CUPS raster data into the Samsung SPL format the printer understands. That codec is then wired into macOS’s native CUPS stack, so printing happens through the system like a normal driver. There’s no Linux VM handling the actual print workflow and the entire process basically acting as a driver normally at system level.
In theory, yeah - rastertospl could be reimplemented from scratch. But that would be way more unreliable while turning this from a ~4-hour project into a ~4-day reverse-engineering project, when starting this, I really just wanted a working home printer and running a tiny compatibility applet in Docker just for that codec feels like a pretty reasonable compromise AND I get to not see my mac kernel crash if it messes up.
I didn't expect this to blow up this much lol, so I'll be experimenting with this further and am already in talks with the splix team to sort this specific version out"