Packaging Project

From Genunix

Going back to my initial motivation to get involved with OpenSolaris, and trying to find a common thread from conversations both within and without Opensolaris.org, it seems that the biggest area that needs addressing is the lack of a modern comprehensive packaging and distribution standard for OpenSolaris/Solaris. (This needs to be made a top priority)

In order to do that we need a set of common goals, defining what we expect out of our modern packaging standard. I have started with a list below. Let's work from there and see if we can't all agree on what is ideal.

• Should support vertical dependency trees (To ease in installation.)
• Dependencies should support the concept of X version or above.
• Should support the concepts of bundles and horizontal dependencies. This is a concept where a group of packages need to be installed together, or not at all.
• Should be as fine grained as possible
• Should support multiple versions of individual packages
• Should support uninstallation that will check and warn about all dependents
• Should support source packages. (With all dependency info, allowing an install or upgrade via source)