Dear Maintainer,

PyMuPDF has built-in OCR support, based on Tesseract. See:

https://pymupdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/recipes-ocr.html

The python3-fitz package in Debian lacks this support though. Is there
any particular reason why this is the case? If not, is it possible to
enable it?

Thanks,
Alex

Hi Alex, and the mupdf maintainers,

The fact that pymupdf is not able to use OCR seem to be related to the
fact that mupdf is compiled without support for it, and so I'm
reassigning this issue to src:mupdf.

I'm attaching a patch to enable OCR using Tesseract and Leptonica.
This would enable an use via pymudf, amongst other things.

It would mean all mupdf users would fetch tesseract and leptonica, but
the data files aren't actually required.

Would you be keep to add such dependencies, to add support for doing
OCR? It would enable a set of use cases, especially automatically doing
OCR and add a layer of invisible text on top of PDFs built by mupdf.

All the best,
Alexis

PS: That's my first time with the BTS, and so I hope I did things right :-)
------ BEGIN PATCH ------

diff --git a/debian/control b/debian/control
index dff28c5..6c30d6c 100644
--- a/debian/control
+++ b/debian/control
@@ -19,9 +19,11 @@ Build-Depends: afdko-bin:native,
                 libjbig2dec0-dev (>= 0.20),
                 libjpeg-dev,
                 liblcms2-dev,
+               libleptonica-dev,
                 libmujs-dev (>= 1.3.8),
                 libopenjp2-7-dev,
                 libssl-dev,
+               libtesseract-dev,
                 libx11-dev,
                 libxext-dev,
                 libxrandr-dev,
diff --git a/debian/rules b/debian/rules
index a496f69..dfc9c0d 100755
--- a/debian/rules
+++ b/debian/rules
@@ -43,6 +43,10 @@ BUILD_FLAGS += USE_SYSTEM_MUJS=yes
  BUILD_FLAGS += USE_SYSTEM_LIBS=yes
  # Force using system lcms2 (was not included in default system library
set)
  BUILD_FLAGS += USE_SYSTEM_LCMS2=yes
+# Enable Tesseract OCR support, linking against the system tesseract and
+# leptonica libraries. This appends "-tesseract" to the build suffix,
+# so keep LIB_DIR below in sync.
+BUILD_FLAGS += tesseract=yes USE_SYSTEM_TESSERACT=yes
USE_SYSTEM_LEPTONICA=yes
  BUILD_FLAGS += LD=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)-ld

  ifeq (,$(filter terse,$(DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS)))
@@ -73,7 +77,7 @@ override_dh_auto_install:
         install -m744 -T $(CURDIR)/debian/mupdf.sh
$(CURDIR)/debian/tmp/usr/bin/mupdf
         sh debian/install_icons.sh
  ifeq (,$(filter nocheck,$(DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS)))
-       $(MAKE) -C $(CURDIR)/debian/tests test
LIB_DIR=$(CURDIR)/build/shared-debug-Py_LIMITED_API_0x030d0000
+       $(MAKE) -C $(CURDIR)/debian/tests test
LIB_DIR=$(CURDIR)/build/shared-debug-Py_LIMITED_API_0x030d0000-tesseract
  endif

  override_dh_gencontrol:

------ END PATCH ------

Hi Alex, and the mupdf maintainers,

The fact that pymupdf is not able to use OCR seem to be related to the
fact that mupdf is compiled without support for it, and so I'm
reassigning this issue to src:mupdf.

I'm attaching a patch to enable OCR using Tesseract and Leptonica.
This would enable an use via pymudf, amongst other things.

It would mean all mupdf users would fetch tesseract and leptonica, but
the data files aren't actually required.

Would you be keep to add such dependencies, to add support for doing
OCR? It would enable a set of use cases, especially automatically doing
OCR and add a layer of invisible text on top of PDFs built by mupdf.

All the best,
Alexis

PS: That's my first time with the BTS, and so I hope I did things right :-)

------ BEGIN PATCH ------

diff --git a/debian/control b/debian/control
index dff28c5..6c30d6c 100644
--- a/debian/control
+++ b/debian/control
@@ -19,9 +19,11 @@ Build-Depends: afdko-bin:native,
                 libjbig2dec0-dev (>= 0.20),
                 libjpeg-dev,
                 liblcms2-dev,
+               libleptonica-dev,
                 libmujs-dev (>= 1.3.8),
                 libopenjp2-7-dev,
                 libssl-dev,
+               libtesseract-dev,
                 libx11-dev,
                 libxext-dev,
                 libxrandr-dev,
diff --git a/debian/rules b/debian/rules
index a496f69..dfc9c0d 100755
--- a/debian/rules
+++ b/debian/rules
@@ -43,6 +43,10 @@ BUILD_FLAGS += USE_SYSTEM_MUJS=yes
  BUILD_FLAGS += USE_SYSTEM_LIBS=yes
  # Force using system lcms2 (was not included in default system library
set)
  BUILD_FLAGS += USE_SYSTEM_LCMS2=yes
+# Enable Tesseract OCR support, linking against the system tesseract and
+# leptonica libraries. This appends "-tesseract" to the build suffix,
+# so keep LIB_DIR below in sync.
+BUILD_FLAGS += tesseract=yes USE_SYSTEM_TESSERACT=yes
USE_SYSTEM_LEPTONICA=yes
  BUILD_FLAGS += LD=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)-ld

  ifeq (,$(filter terse,$(DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS)))
@@ -73,7 +77,7 @@ override_dh_auto_install:
         install -m744 -T $(CURDIR)/debian/mupdf.sh
$(CURDIR)/debian/tmp/usr/bin/mupdf
         sh debian/install_icons.sh
  ifeq (,$(filter nocheck,$(DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS)))
-       $(MAKE) -C $(CURDIR)/debian/tests test
LIB_DIR=$(CURDIR)/build/shared-debug-Py_LIMITED_API_0x030d0000
+       $(MAKE) -C $(CURDIR)/debian/tests test
LIB_DIR=$(CURDIR)/build/shared-debug-Py_LIMITED_API_0x030d0000-tesseract
  endif

  override_dh_gencontrol:

------ END PATCH ------

Hello!

Thanks for the patch! It seems to be working.. I'll try to include it in
the next release 1.28.

Regards!

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
mupdf, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 1082023@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Daniel Echeverri <epsilon@debian.org> (supplier of updated mupdf package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)
Format: 1.8
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2026 22:57:10 -0500
Source: mupdf
Binary: libmupdf-dev libmupdf28.0 libmupdf28.0-dbgsym mupdf mupdf-dbgsym mupdf-doc mupdf-tools mupdf-tools-dbgsym python3-mupdf python3-mupdf-dbgsym
Architecture: source amd64 all
Version: 1.28.0+ds1-1
Distribution: experimental
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Kan-Ru Chen (陳侃如) <koster@debian.org>
Changed-By: Daniel Echeverri <epsilon@debian.org>
Description:
 libmupdf-dev - development files for the MuPDF viewer
 libmupdf28.0 - shared library for the MuPDF viewer
 mupdf      - lightweight PDF viewer
 mupdf-doc  - documentation for the MuPDF library and tools
 mupdf-tools - command line tools for the MuPDF viewer
 python3-mupdf - Python bindings for MuPDF library
Closes: 1082023
Changes:
 mupdf (1.28.0+ds1-1) experimental; urgency=medium
 .
   * New upstream version 1.28.0+ds1
   * debian/control
     + Add libleptonica-dev, libtesseract-dev, libcmark-gfm-dev,
       libcmark-gfm-extensions-dev, doxygen in B-D
     + Rename lib package to libmupdf28.0 for new soname
     + Add mupdf-doc package
   * debian/patches
     + Add patches
       + 0015-fix-cmark-gfm-libs-typo.diff
       + 0016-docs-conf-no-venv.diff
       + 0017-make-doc-reproducible.diff
       + 0018-remove-cmark-extension.diff
     + Remove patches, merge with upstream
       + CVE-2026-25556.patch
       + CVE-2026-3308.patch
       + CVE-2026-40505.patch
       + fix-mutool-manpage-groff-errors.patch
     + Refresh patches
       + 0001-mupdf_manpage.patch
       + 0004-use-debian-flavor-build-options.patch
       + 0005-MuPDF-crossbuild-use-target-arch-pkg-config.patch
       + 0006-MuPDF-crossbuild-use-host-cc-for-utils.patch
       + 0008-Add-fallback-for-missing-SA_NOCLDWAIT.patch
       + 0010_add_missing_hardening_flags.diff
       + 0012-exclude-unavailable-noto-fonts.patch
       + 0013-remove-unavailable-sphinx-extensions.patch
       + fix-manpages-errors.patch
   * debian/rules
     + Enable OCR support (Closes: #1082023)
       + Thanks to Alexis Métaireau for the patch
     + Install documentation in mupdf-doc package
   * debian/copyright
     + Exclude bundled thirdparty/cmark-gfm, we use system lib instead
   * Update symbols file
   * Rename libmupdf27.0.install to libmupdf28.0.install
   * Rename mupdf.doc-base to mupdf-doc.doc-base
   * Rename mupdf.links to mupdf-doc.links
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