Laurent Blume wrote: > Shawn Walker a ?crit : >> As for OpenSolaris distributions that don't embrace IPS; I think they >> will be at a severe disadvantage, but I'm biased :) I'm also of the >> belief that third-party vendors would rather use a supported >> packaging system published by Sun. > > I'm a bit late to that thread, but - what is an IPS package? I know of > IPS repositories, sure, but never seen anything .ips? > > Also, I've never seen any commercial vendors out there using that kind > of distribution model. In my experience, they make actual files > downloadable, or even more commonly, they send a media. > And a big part of my previous job was installing software on systems > with no network anyway, for security reason, so a network-only system > is a big no-no.
IPS is a new packaging system and is designed with the future, not the past, in mind. The way to handle secure environments will be to mirror an IPS repository, trim it to suit your environment, and install privately from that. Alternatively, if you were hyper secure you might use the Distribution Constructor to create custom install ISOs. Both these solutions are a major improvement from systems of the past. The only major impediment to IPS's success is its newness.... having to learn a new packaging system, especially one so radically different as IPS, isn't something most sysadmins want to waste, errr, i mean spend, time on. But, once you do the advantages become clear. > Now, considering that even SysV packaging isn't really so commonly > used 20 years after it was introduced, I seriously doubt that anybody > will jump on the new, unproven, evolving format. The packaging system has never been a user choice, really. If you want to run Sun's OpenSolaris distro we'll have to adopt IPS. Same was true for RPM or SysV. Put another way, the essence of any distribution is the packaging system and therefore if people reject IPS they'll reject OpenSolaris (meaning Indiana) and have to instead choose a distro like Nexenta, in the same way that if you wanted to run Linux but disliked RPM you choose Debian or Slackware or Gentoo or whatever. benr.
