Introduction to IPS

The Image Packaging System, pkg(5), is a framework that provides for software lifecycle management such as installation, upgrade, and removal of packages. IPS also provides users the ability to create their own software packages, create and manage packaging repositories, and mirror existing packaging repositories.

The OpenSolaris 2009.06 release uses IPS as its packaging system.

After an initial installation of the OpenSolaris 2009.06 operating system, you may find that many of the software applications that you use on a regular basis are not immediately available for use. You can install these software applications from a packaging repository through the Image Packaging System CLI and GUI (Package Manager) clients.

After you have installed the packages on your system, the IPS clients can be used to search, upgrade, and manage them.

The IPS clients can be also used to upgrade an entire system to a new release of OpenSolaris, create and manage repositories, and mirror an existing repository. For more information, see Chapter 2, Learning About IPS and Chapter 3, Working With Packages.

If the system on which IPS is installed can access the Internet, then the clients can access and install software from the OpenSolaris packaging repositories, http://pkg.opensolaris.org/dev and http://pkg.opensolaris.org/release. For a list of repositories available for the OpenSolaris 2009.06 release, see Table 7-1.