OpenSolaris Repository Gets a Makeover…

December 2, 2008 9:10 pm gman OpenSolaris, Web

Dan mailed a heads up to pkg-discuss list today about the makeover that has now been delivered to pkg.opensolaris.org, introducing a couple of great changes.

From now on, users will be able to choose between 2 streams of change

  • A stable stream which contains a snapshot of packages that have been tried and tested for a particular release. This repository may get an occasional putback for some particularly horrid bugs that may occur – if you have a Sun Subscription you get more support
  • A developer stream which receives the latest and greatest packages as and when they are available. This comes at a cost though – potentially less testing, and therefore more risk.

Switching is easy – for the upcoming OpenSolaris 2008.11 release the default authority will be the stable stream, so you do nothing! To switch to the faster moving developer stream, you can quickly use the pkg(1) command line –

  $ pfexec pkg set-authority -O http://pkg.opensolaris.org/dev opensolaris.org

You'll also notice that the web interface has undergone some surgery too. Nice work Shawn, Brad and Brock (and others!).

3 Responses

  1. Tom Servo Says:
    December 3rd, 2008 at 6:07 am

    About time for the interface refresh. The main page grew to multiple megabytes, which was pretty unhandy to check for the newest releases.

  2. UX-admin Says:
    December 3rd, 2008 at 8:11 pm

    Wow… this is starkly reminiscent of sgi IRIX’s “maintenance” and “feature” streams. They were even called “streams”.

    A cool concept, actually.

  3. gman Says:
    December 3rd, 2008 at 9:33 pm

    UX-admin: All the best ideas are stolen from someone else. In seriously though, we absolutely knew we needed to get there – we’re essentially just catching up.