pkg(5): image packaging system
pkg(5), the image packaging system, is an attempt to design and implement a software delivery system with interaction with a network repository as its primary design goal. Other key ideas are: safe execution for zones and other installation contexts, use of ZFS for efficiency and rollback, preventing the introduction of incorrect or incomplete packages, and efficient use of bandwidth.
The pkg(5) project is sponsored by the Install CG.
Filing bugs
We would really like to eliminate any bug you encounter—so every bug report we receive is valued. Should you run into a bug, please check the Bugzilla database to make sure it hasn't already been reported. Feel free to file bugs there or report them on the discussion list. If using Bugzilla to file issues, you can file directly into appropriate classification and product:
- For bugs involving any of the commands or the packagemanager graphical interface, use the "Development" classification and the "pkg" product.
- For bugs involving package contents—like missing dependencies or incorrect metadata text, or a bad packagename, use the "Distribution" classification, the "opensolaris" product, and the "packaging" component.
Getting more involved
Our discussion alias is pkg-discuss@opensolaris.org. Ideas, issues, patches are all welcome; commit notifications add to the open development aura. The TODO list provides some potential areas to start; short essays and notes on various topics—such as content filtering, handling of ELF dependencies, and some initial RFEs—can be found in the doc/ directory of the repository. More specific hints can be found in the developer information page.
Since 31 Oct, we've been running repository servers at pkg.opensolaris.org. By default, 2009.06 and 2008.11 releases are configured to pull packages from the release/ repository. Development builds of the next OpenSolaris release are available at the dev/ repository. If you want to experiment, you can use the image-create subcommand of pkg(1) to create your own image that subscribes to the dev/ repository:
$ pkg image-create -F -a opensolaris.org=http://pkg.opensolaris.org/dev/ /path/to/image
(If you're interested in developing pkg(5)-style packages, the best step at present is to join the discussion. As support for multiple package authors is fleshed out, we'll set up additional test publication spaces or repositories.)
The source code is stored in a Mercurial repository here at opensolaris.org. You can get a copy of the source tree via
$ hg clone ssh://anon@hg.opensolaris.org/hg/pkg/gate
If you would like to browse the source directly, it's available via the opensolaris.org source cross-reference:
http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/pkg/gate/
Please get a contributor agreement in place before submitting anything but the most trivial of patches. At present, pkg(5) is being implemented in Python; we're developing in an ON-sympathetic coding style.
Documentation and architecture process
See Documentation for preliminary user documentation. Also, you can read the draft manual pages directly out of the source code repository:
- pkg(1), the retrieval and installation client,
- pkgsend(1), the publication client,
- pkgrecv(1), the raw contents retrieval utility,
- pkg.depotd(1M), the depot server, and
- pkg(5), the system overview.
The one pager, which begins the architectural review, was recently published; the image packaging system will be tracked as case 2008/190.
At present, we expect a number of format, interface, and operational flag days to come. Only experimental deployments using the image packaging system should be considered.
Background reading
The project team has been explaining some of the ingoing assumptions behind the project in a series of blog posts: