Hello,

For those of us who look for additional software and are familiar with
BSD systems, here is another way to install software : the Netbsd
Package Collection (pkgsrc). pkgsrc has supported solaris for years
and is still usable with opensolaris.

It can be used for 2 things:
-installing binary packages
-building the software from source automatically using distfiles
(think recipes) provided by the port maintainer.

Installing a binary packages is similar to the traditional solaris
way, but will also take care of downloading the package from a mirror
according to the PKG_PATH variable? :

-----------------------------
pkg_add nameofthesoftwares
(notice the "_" in the command name)
-----------------------------

Downloading and installing the software from sources would take only 3
commands providing you have previously downloaded or synced the
distfiles (think recipes) :

-----------------------------
cd /path/of/your/pkgsrc/distfile/category/nameofthesoftware
make
make install
-----------------------------

Installing the binary package will not take care of the dependencies,
installing from source will.

Additionally, you can use pkgin which is a third party tool to manage
pkgsrc packages in more or less the same way as yum or apt on linux
distros using commands like avail, list, search, install, upgrade,
remove, show-deps...

Here are 3 blog entries that show how to install pkgsrc on opensolaris :
http://www.skytale.net/blog/archives/15-Using-pkgsrc-on-Opensolaris,-Part-1.html
http://www.skytale.net/blog/archives/16-Using-pkgsrc-on-Opensolaris,-Part-2.html
http://www.skytale.net/blog/archives/17-Using-pkgsrc-on-Opensolaris,-Part-3.html

The pkgsrc official guide :
http://www.netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/

Netbsd host a mirror of pkgsrc packages for Solaris 10 which could be
used with opensolaris :
http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/SunOS/i386/5.10_2009Q3/

pkgin :
http://imil.net/pkgin/

Have fun !

--
Thomas Leveille

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