This may be a huge stretch, but what would the implications be of having the consolodation managed and distributed via the ports system? This is how other free OS's typically handle non core packages (ie: FreeBSD et al). Given this, a user would simply need to issue a 'port upgrade' command to download and install the latest patches/software for a given port.
There is of course the option of maintaining multiple revisions of the ports repository. ie: stable (sun supported), vs. unstable (unsupported).
Cheers!
Steve
On 10/9/06, Alan Coopersmith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Steve Stallion wrote:
> I completely agree. It does make the dependency list much bigger but
> there are a couple of options (at least as I see it):
>
> 1) /usr/sfw is moved into the ports collection (eventually of course),
> and we all live in a big happy world.
I think there's confusion here, mostly caused by Sun's poor choice of names.
The Companion, which installs in /opt/sfw, is the unbundled/unsupported add-on
collection of freeware. It's a poor choice to base dependencies on since
it's traditionally only been updated in sync with new Solaris releases, and
gets no security or urgent bug fixes outside of that - so Solaris 8 users are
still stuck with a Companion last updated in 2002, bugs, security holes and
outdated packages in all.
The SFW consolidation, which currently installs much of it's software in
/usr/sfw but is moving to /usr/bin & /usr/lib during the Nevada development
cycle, is a fully supported/updated part of Solaris. Depending on that for
software tied to a specific Solaris release is not that risky (though there's
always some risk when dealing with upstream communities without compatibility
as a core goal - for instance, see the recent havoc caused by OpenSSL's
compatibility-breaking upgrade), but since the older releases of Solaris only
get security and critical bug fixes, may not have all the features you want
out of newer versions.
--
-Alan Coopersmith- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering
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