Glenn: I think your arguments are sound. It does seem that there should be an interface for finding out if the user has a preference for IPS to be used as the packaging system (beyond IPS just being installed on the system).
It also seems odd that there isn't a standard interface that can be reliably used to differentiate between a Solaris and OpenSolaris installation. Or some other OpenSolaris derivative, for that matter. Without these sorts of interfaces, programs like codeina can't reliably know when to provide IPS packages for end-users via a client application. Brian > you could check whether pkg(5) exists, if it doesnt then it's a nevada > that doesnt support IPS or it's solaris 10. > > What I'm saying is that the existence of pkg(5) on a system does *not* > mean that the system is running OpenSolaris. Nor does it's existence > mean that it's not running Solaris 10. > > Since IPS is open source, other groups besides the ones working on > OpenSolaris/Indiana have taken it and adopted it for their needs. Some > of those needs are to run IPS on Solaris 10 (for whatever reason). So, > if you check for the existence of pkg(5) and decide that if you find it > you must be running on OpenSolaris and not Solaris 10, then you're going > to be sorely disappointed sooner or later when some feature you expect > to be available in OpenSolaris *isn't* available because you're really > running on Solaris 10. > > Now, if you don't care about the underlying OS and just want to 'blast > away' and install one-size-fits-all binary apps in whatever the > 'seemingly' default package manger happens to be then sure you could > check for the existence of pkg(5) and be done with it. Of course you'll > run in to corner cases where someone has installed IPS on their system > to 'check it out' but doesn't really want the system managed by pkg and > that'll just blow this check out of the water in those cases. Not to > mention that available features of a system are going to differ > significantly between Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris. So crafting a > 'one-size-fits-all' set of bits (especially as it pertains to media > codecs) probably isn't going to be the easiest thing to do. > > Anyway, my .02 fwiw. > > Glenn > _______________________________________________ > opensolaris-discuss mailing list > opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
