Consolidation
From Genunix
A consolidation is a set of software that is built and delivered together. Multiple consolidations can be combined into a single product release. Solaris is currently built out of over a dozen consolidations, though the exact number varies from release to release.
The breakdown of a product into consolidations can be done based on a variety of criteria. The consolidation boundaries currently in Solaris are due to one or more of these factors:
- History
- License (especially for software based on external code bases)
- Sun internal organizational boundaries
- External community software comes from
- Functionality / feature area
While traditionally, the consolidation breakdown of Solaris has been of little importance to users, it is much more visible to OpenSolaris developers for these reasons:
- Source release Release of sources from Solaris to the OpenSolaris community is being done on a consolidation by consolidation basis, with each consolidation determining its release timeline and what portions of its source will be released. The first consolidation to be released to OpenSolaris was the OS/Networking Consolidation (also known as "ON"), but others have been released since.
- Source building Each consolidation will be releasing its source in separate modules, with consolidation-specific instructions, since build systems and environments vary among consolidations.
- Change contribution process Each consolidation has its own process for integrating changes into their source code, and is responsible for figuring out how to adapt those to allow OpenSolaris community contributions. Some phases, like ARC review, are globally required - others, like the exact code review process, vary from one consolidation to another.
- Consolidation Private interfaces Many interfaces in Solaris are declared to have Consolidation Private stability, which means that they may be used freely by other software in the same consolidation, but special arrangements need to be made for anyone outside the consolidation to use them. This allows change to them in an easier fashion, since the person making the change can check all uses of them inside the consolidation and change them as necessary at the same time, without having to worry about coordinating build schedules or mixing and matching consolidations from different builds.
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