notes.billmill.org / computer_usage / printers /

Brother HL-2220 on macOS Golden Gate

last updated: Sep 26, 2026

Brother's printer driver for the HL-2220 on macOS 27 (Golden Gate) is x86_64 only, I discovered when I tried to print after I upgraded.

To fix it, the agent built me a driver from brlaser, which restores the printer.

The agent says:

The HL-2220 is a host-based "GDI" printer — no PostScript, no PCL, no AirPrint/IPP.

To compile the driver, it did:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser.git
cd brlaser
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
      -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES=arm64 \
      -DCMAKE_POLICY_VERSION_MINIMUM=3.5
cmake --build build -j8
cd build && ctest            # 4/4 passed
ppdc -d ppd brlaser.drv      # generates ppd/br2220.ppd

Build deps came from Homebrew (cmake) plus the CLT SDK for cups/raster.h.

Two gotchas

  1. -DCMAKE_POLICY_VERSION_MINIMUM=3.5 is required — current CMake rejects the
    project's old cmake_minimum_required outright.
  2. The generated PPD names the filter bare (rastertobrlaser), so CUPS looks in
    ServerBin = /usr/libexec/cups/filter, which is read-only under SIP.
    Rewrite it to an absolute path in /usr/local/libexec/cups/filter/. This is
    exactly what Brother's own PPD does.

To install it:

install -d -o root -g wheel -m 755 /usr/local/libexec/cups/filter
install -o root -g wheel -m 755 rastertobrlaser /usr/local/libexec/cups/filter/
install -o root -g wheel -m 644 brlaser-hl2220.ppd \
  /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/
lpadmin -p HL2220_brlaser \
  -v 'usb://Brother/HL-2220%20series?serial=A1N115108' \
  -P /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/brlaser-hl2220.ppd \
  -D 'Brother HL-2220 (brlaser)' -L adama -o printer-is-shared=false -E

In the future, to diagnose an error, try lpstat -l -p <queue>, which is what the agent used to diagnose the badarch error

I probably could have installed rosetta 2 to get it working, but this seems sufficient for now and I can get rid of Brother's driver

↑ up