IPS Image Packaging System Document Index ( pkg, pkgrepo ) (Doc ID 1382916.1)

Last updated on JANUARY 23, 2025

Applies to:

Solaris Operating System - Version 11.0 and later
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Purpose

This document contains information about the Solaris 11 IPS Image Packaging

Scope

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 Solaris 11 release uses IPS as its packaging system.

After an initial installation of the Solaris 11 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 Solaris 11, create and manage repositories, and mirror an existing repository.

If the system on which IPS is installed can access the Internet, then the clients can access and install software from the Solaris 11 packaging repositories,

DESCRIPTION

pkg is the retrieval client for the image packaging system. With a valid configuration, pkg can be invoked to create locations for
packages to be installed, called 'images', and install packages into those images. Packages are published by publishers, who may
make their packages available at one or more repositories. pkg, then, retrieves packages from a publisher's repository and
installs them into an image.

A publisher is a forward domain name that can be used to identify a person, group of persons, or an organization as the source of one or
more packages. The name of a publisher does not have to be contained within the URIs that identify the locations of publisher repositories.
For example, the name of a publisher might be "example.com", but its repositories may be hosted at "example.org" or "example.net".