On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 11:06 PM, Kannan <ck_kannan at yahoo.com> wrote: > Based on Solaris usage metacluster concept had evolved over time > based. The issue is number of classification stayed same though we > have many packages now. So one idea could be that to introduce one > more classification based Solaris supportability. Say create a > classification Entire + X where X packages are not supported by > monthly patch bundle. Or Entire + OpenSource (This will make it > easy to implement some company policies)
A key problem that I have with the metaclusters as they exist today is there is no way to say "SUNWCreq + all hardware platform support". This is key functionality that is needed to support flash archives across a large number of server models. It looks as though by the time that any of this changes, a new packaging system will be providing the functionality. I would love to see Solaris move to a having feature-based metapackages, then advertise the availability of the features as being part of the particular metapackage. This would be a great step forward in assisting users that want to create minimized systems, yet would allow Sun the flexibility to do things like switch out routing daemons or iscsi target software without affecting how the administrator customizes packages to install (or not). I've written up my thoughts on this at http://mgerdts.blogspot.com/2008/03/solaris-wish-list-feature-based-meta.html In my scenario of saying "give me SUNWCreq + all platforms", this would be a matter of saying that I want whatever the equivalent of SUNWCreq is plus pkg://feature/platform/all. Presumably pkg://feature/platform/all would be aware of binary compatibility constraints and include the other platform features such as pkg://feature/platform/SUNW_T5140, pkg://feature/platform/SUNW_Sun-Fire-15000, etc. -- Mike Gerdts http://mgerdts.blogspot.com/
