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Notes on Creating Solaris packages

I make this note as a reminder of the correct incantation of the Solaris 10 commands to make a package in datastream (i.e., file) format.

Follow the instructions in Creating Solaris Packages to prepare the files required by the pkgmk command to actually build the software package.

The actual package is built with the command:

  pkgmk -o -r `pwd` -d /tmp/ -f prototype

Caveat:

The -r `pwd` switch tells pkgmk to use the base directory `pwd` for resolving any relative pathname in the prototype file; that is, the files included in the package will be those under the `pwd` tree. This is the behaviour you expect if you are used to Linux software packaging. Using -r / as advised by Solaris packaging guides will include in the package the files that are actually copied from the / filesystem, i.e., the live running system!
The -d /tmp switch tells pkgmk to put the generated package directory in /tmp. If you have your package sources (the files to be packaged) under /tmp/packagename, then you are asking for trouble.

Solaris packages come in two formats: the filesystem format (all files in the package are grouped in a directory tree), and the datastream format (all files are packed into an archive file, similarly to what is customary in Linux). The pkgtrans command is used to convert from one format to the other.

The pkgmk utility will generate packages in filesystem format; the correct incantation to convert it to datastream format is as follows:

  pkgtrans -n -s /tmp /tmp/CSCSsmf-cfengine-1.1.3.pkg CSCSsmf-cfengine

Caveat:

Option -s specifies that pkgtrans converts to a datastream package
Option -n specifies that the destination file is created if it does not exist.
First argument /tmp specified the directory the source package(s) should be searched for in.
Second argument (/tmp/CSCSsmf-cfengine-1.1.3.pkg) specifies the destination package datastream
Third (and following, if any) arguments specify the source package names, which are searched for in the directory specified as first argument.