OGB members, The Installation and Packaging Community has voted to sponsor the below project.
Dave pkg Image Packaging System Sponsored by the Installation and Packaging CG Stephen Hahn (sch), Danek Duvall (dduvall), Bart Smaalders (barts), Johansen (johansen), David Comay (comay) This project seeks to develop a software packaging system that is able to update, in a safe and predictable fashion, a variety of software components across a range of system install contexts. The image packaging system is intended to solve a collection of software update-related problems, as outlined in [1 - 5]. The project hopes to be a candidate in the Indiana effort to build an OpenSolaris-based distribution. The project coordinates with the Caiman project to produce a new installer architecture for use in OpenSolaris distributions; the project expects to work with the System V Packaging Project to amend the latter's software to be more compatible on a system using image packaging. Coordination with the Zones CG and other interested projects and CGs is also anticipated. At present, the project has completed an initial sanity test of its prototype--installation into a whole root zone--and is ready to invite others to participate in development. References 1. S. Hahn, "Observations on packaging", 2007. http://blogs.sun.com/sch/entry/observations_on_packaging 2. B. Smaalders, "Rethinking Patching", 2007. http://blogs.sun.com/barts/entry/rethinking_patching 3. S. Hahn, "pkg(1): No more installer magic", 2007. http://blogs.sun.com/sch/entry/pkg_no_more_installer_magic 4. S. Hahn, "pkg(1): Leaving the build system "out"", 2007. http://blogs.sun.com/sch/entry/pkg_leaving_the_build_system 5. S. Hahn, "pkg(1): a no scripting zone", 2007. http://blogs.sun.com/sch/entry/pkg_1_a_no_scripting