Hello Gatelings,
The final days of SVR4 packaging as a delivery mechanism for Solaris
are coming quickly. OpenSolaris, the supported and only product
from Sun based on the Nevada codebase, has been delivered using IPS
since its original release in 2008.05.
All consolidations will be moving to delivering IPS repositories to
Release Engineering (RE) rather than SVR4 packages before Solaris Next.
Builds are currently restricted in preparation for OpenSolaris
2010.03 (currently scheduled as 134). In the first fully
open build thereafter, ON will move from a SVR4 RE delivery to
delivering an IPS repository to RE.
There will be lots more information coming, including KTDs and
detailed documentation for all developers. But for now, we wanted
to give you a brief idea of what's coming:
- ON 'nightly' will build an IPS repository natively for both
developer use and delivery to RE.
- Tools will be provided to simply setup your test systems to
upgrade quickly to your nightly-built ON IPS repositories.
- ON will stop generating SVR4 packages; the contents of
usr/src/pkgdefs will be removed.
- Developers changing packaging will be expected to modify IPS
manifests in usr/src/pkg rather than SVR4 pkginfo and prototype
files.
- BFU will be supported for a very limited number of builds. But,
it is expected to be removed in favor of developer upgrade using
IPS, which means all developers will be testing the (blindingly
fast!) customer upgrade path.
- Modern IPS bits will be required to build ON. For a few builds,
this can be done by pkgadd of SUNWipkg on a recent SVR4 Nevada
system. But, that will be supported only for a very short amount
of time. Build systems will need to be installed with OpenSolaris.
The gate machine has been running OpenSolaris for quite some time
now so feel free to migrate your build machines ahead of the
transition!
- RE is no longer releasing an SVR4-based build. As previously
communicated both within Sun and in the OpenSolaris community,
130 is the last SVR4-based build they intend to release.
We're creating a page for information on this transition focused
on the ON developer. It's a bit sparse right now, but it will be
significantly expanded over the coming weeks.
http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+on/ON+IPS+FAQ
If you'd like to ask questions or keep an eye on this project during
its development, please join us at on-ips-dev at opensolaris.org.
Subscribe to the mailman list by sending a mail to
on-ips-dev-subscribe at opensolaris.org.
liane
