IPS Package Groups
- by Alan_Solaris_RE
IPS group packages consist solely of dependencies on 
other packages that make up a logical grouping of software. These are 
similar to, but not the equivalent of, Solaris 10 metaclusters. The main
 difference is that metaclusters are nested subsets ranging from a 
minimal install to nearly all packages on the media. Group packages have
 no such hierarchy. They can overlap other groups, or be completely 
disjoint sets. 
  A group dependency is set this way in an IPS package manifest file: 
      depend fmri=full/pkg/name type=group
 
  Current Solaris Groups 
  Solaris
 currently has 4 system groups defined. These are used for different 
types of installation, and are included in the xml manifest files used 
by the various Solaris installers: 
    
   
     
       
         
           Package Name 
         
         
          Summary  
         
         
           Description 
         
         
           Default Installation For: 
         
       
       
         
           group/system/solaris-desktop 
         
         
           
            Oracle Solaris Desktop 
           
         
         
           
            Provides an Oracle Solaris desktop environment 
           
         
         
          Live Media  
         
       
       
         
           group/system/solaris-large-server 
         
         
           
            Oracle Solaris Large Server 
           
         
         
           
            Provides an Oracle Solaris large server environment 
           
         
         
          Text Installer  
         
       
       
         
           group/system/solaris-small-server 
         
         
           
            Oracle Solaris Small Server 
           
         
         
           
            Provides a useful command-line Oracle Solaris environment 
           
         
         
           Zones 
         
       
       
         
           group/system/solaris-auto-install 
         
         
           Oracle Solaris Automated Installer Client 
         
         
           Provides an Oracle Solaris Automated Installer client 
         
         
           Automated Installer 
         
       
     
   
    
    
  There are also several "feature" groups such as AMP and GNU Developer Tools. These are provided for convenience, but are not used directly by any installers. 
  Retrieving Group Package Information 
  A listing of all current groups can be found with the command: 
  pkg info -r group/*
 
  A listing of all the packages in a group can be obtained with: 
  pkg contents -o fmri -H -rt depend -a type=group groupname
 
  An example: 
  $ pkg contents -o fmri -H -rt depend -a type=group solaris-desktop
archiver/gnu-tar
audio/audio-utilities
codec/flac
codec/libtheora
codec/ogg-vorbis
codec/speex
communication/im/pidgin
etc.
 
  You can determine which package group is currently installed on your system: 
  $ pkg list group/system/\*  
 
    
  Output would look like:
 
  NAME (PUBLISHER)                                  VERSION                    IFO
group/system/solaris-desktop                      0.5.11-0.175.0.0.0.0.0    i--
 
  Note that there are not version numbers associated with a group package dependency. The package version that best fits the system will be used, based on other dependencies such as what is listed in incorporation files. 
  Installing a Group 
  To Install a group, simple use the group package name as you would any other package: 
  $ pkg install solaris-small-server 
   If you want to exclude a package from installing, you can use the --reject flag: 
  $ pkg install --reject audio/audio-utilities solaris-desktop
 
  Creating Your Own Group 
    
  To create your own group package, you can follow the pkg(5) documentation on how to create a package, and use this action for each package that is part of your group: 
    
      depend fmri=full/pkg/name type=group