OpenSolaris Project: Image Packaging System
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pkg(5): image packaging system
pkg(5), the image packaging system, is an attempt to design
and implement a software delivery system with interaction with a network
repository as its primary design goal. Other key ideas are: safe
execution for zones and other
installation contexts, use of ZFS for
efficiency and rollback, preventing the introduction of incorrect or
incomplete packages, and efficient use of bandwidth.
The pkg(5) project is sponsored by the Install CG.
NOTE: The image packaging system is under development. Changes to interfaces may occur as part of the architectural review process, as shortcomings are identified, and as new features are introduced. Questions about planned or possible change should be asked on pkg-discuss.
Getting involved
Our discussion alias is pkg-discuss@opensolaris.org.
Ideas, issues, patches are all welcome; commit notifications add to the
open development aura. The TODO list
provides some potential areas to start; short essays and notes on
various topics—such as content
filtering, handling
of ELF dependencies, and some initial
RFEs—can be found in the doc/ directory of the
repository. More specific hints can be found in the developer information page. Should you run into a bug, please check the Bugzilla database to make sure it hasn't already been reported. Feel free to file bugs there or report them on the discussion list. Use the "Development" classification and the "pkg" product.
Since 31 Oct, we're running a beta repository server at pkg.opensolaris.org.
By default, the Developer
Preview is configured to pull packages from this repository, but
if you want to experiment, you can use the image-create
subcommand of pkg(1) to create your own image that
subscribes to this repository:
$ pkg image-create -F -a opensolaris.org=http://pkg.opensolaris.org /path/to/image
(If you're interested in developing pkg(5)-style packages,
the best step at present is to join the discussion. As support for
multiple package authors is fleshed out, we'll set up additional test
publication spaces or repositories.)
The source code is stored in a Mercurial repository here at
opensolaris.org. You can get a copy of the source tree via
$ hg clone ssh://anon@hg.opensolaris.org/hg/pkg/gate
Please get a contributor agreement in place before submitting anything
but the most trivial of patches. At present,
pkg(5) is
being implemented in Python; we're developing in an ON-sympathetic
coding style.
Documentation and architecture process
See Documentation
for preliminary user documentation. Also, you can read the draft manual pages directly out of the source code
repository:
The one
pager, which begins the architectural review, was recently
published; the image packaging system will be tracked as case 2008/190.
At present, we expect a number of format, interface, and operational
flag days to come. Only experimental deployments using the image
packaging system should be considered.
The project team has been explaining some of the ingoing assumptions
behind the project in a series of blog posts:
Blogs
May 5, 12:38 AM
Sunday I spent at Moscone, teaching laptops and projectors to get along. Saturday, Nathaniel, Benjamin, and I dropped in for lunch at the Developer Summit. I managed to talk with a few people before ...
May 5, 12:11 AM
As I did for the preview releases, I'll collect links to mirror sites here. These will also get links on the various download pages out there. Bart and I just finished updating the package repository ...
May 1, 1:00 PM
We're talking about OpenSolaris 2008.05 over on IRC, using the #os200805, from now until 2 p.m. Pacific Time. If you haven't got an IRC client, you can use freenode's Java applet , which worked great ...
Apr 17, 5:38 PM
Right now, if you're subscribed to any of the Installation and Packaging community group or project lists, you'll see a lot of commit notifications as the various teams attempt to fix various bugs ...
Feb 21, 3:52 PM
As part of the changes to get Developer Preview 2 ready, we decided to rejigger the HTTP handling on pkg.opensolaris.org so that we could have more options as more people attempt to use the early ...