The Image Packaging System, also known as IPS, is a

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

package management system A package manager or package management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals wi ...

created by the

OpenSolaris OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system for SPARC and x86 based systems, created by Sun Microsystems and based on Solaris. Its development began in the mid 2000s and ended in 2010. OpenSolaris was developed as ...

community in coordination with Sun Microsystems. It is used by Solaris 11 and several

Illumos Illumos (stylized as "illumos") is a partly free and open-source Unix operating system. It has been developed since 2010 and is based on OpenSolaris, after the discontinuation of that product by Oracle. It comprises a kernel, device driver ...

-based distributions: OpenIndiana, OmniOS, XStreamOS and a growing number of layered applications, including

GlassFish GlassFish is an open-source Jakarta EE platform application server project started by Sun Microsystems, then sponsored by Oracle Corporation, and now living at the Eclipse Foundation and supported by OmniFish, Fujitsu and Payara. The support ...

, across a variety of Operating System platforms. IPS is coded in the Python programming language.

Features

IPS enables a

superuser In computing, the superuser is a special user account used for system administration. Depending on the operating system (OS), the actual name of this account might be root, administrator, admin or supervisor. In some cases, the actual name of the ...

to search for, install, and remove software packages from the Solaris system. * Use of

ZFS ZFS (previously Zettabyte File System) is a file system with Volume manager, volume management capabilities. It began as part of the Sun Microsystems Solaris (operating system), Solaris operating system in 2001. Large parts of Solaris, includin ...

, allowing multiple boot environments and easy package operation rollbacks * Transactional actions * Support for multiple platform architectures within a single package * Legacy support for SVR4 packages * Extensive search grammar * Remote search capability * Changes-only based package updates * Network package repository * File and network-based package publication * Package operation history * On-disk package format (p5p) * Multi-platform ports for layered applications: ** Broad platform support:

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, Darwin, Solaris,

and AIX ** Cross-platform update notification and package management

Graphical user interfaces A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

Considerations

Due to the fact that IPS delivers each file in a separate shelf with a separate checksum, a package update only needs to replace files that have been modified. When dealing with

ELF An elf (: elves) is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic peoples, Germanic folklore. Elves appear especially in Norse mythology, North Germanic mythology, being mentioned in the Icelandic ''Poetic Edda'' and the ''Prose Edda'' ...

binaries, IPS computes checksums only from the loaded parts of an ELF binary. This means in practice that when only the ELF comment section has been changed, there would be no need to update it. However, this method of delivery can cause slower operation when the input source is on a medium with high latency (e.g. internet with higher round trip time or CD/DVD media with slow seeks).

References

External links

GitHub Project: Image Packaging System

Multi-Platform Packaging for Layered Distros

GlassFish Update Center Toolkit

Update Center 2.0 (multiplatform IPS)
OpenSolaris Free package management systems Sun Microsystems software Unix package management-related software Free software programmed in Python {{Install-software-stub