pkg-get and pkgutil package management for Solaris/SunOS

pkg-get
Pkg-get is an open-source, Sun-approved software installation and management tool for Sun Solaris. You can use pkg-get to install a variety of pre-compiled software without having to worry about version compatibility, patch requirements, libraries, or any other prerequisites.

pkgutil
Pkgutil, written in Perl and licensed under GPL, is a tool to make installation of packages in Solaris easier. It handles package dependencies so all required packages are installed before the desired package automatically. This is based on functionality present in apt-get (Debian Linux).

Which tool?
Both tools offer a similar deal... They aide package management on SunOS, they work out dependencies for packages and versioning is controlled by the package manager. I personally use pkgutil, simply because The Open Community Software Project (OpenCSW) has now deprecated support for pkg-get users (This is a large database of free Solaris packages - Note: There are many others you can use with pkg-get)

OpenCSW/Blastwave
The Open Community Software Project (OpenCSW) is an open-source project providing Solaris binary packages of freely available or open-source software. This was previously hosted at Blastwave. The project was originally Blastwave, but this was forked to created The OpenCSW.
OpenCSW provides packages for Solaris 9 and 10, for 32 and 64-bit, x86 and SPARC architectures. Solaris 8 is no longer a 1st-class supported OS[2]: however, there still exists a legacy Solaris 8 archive, which occasionally gets updates.

This isn't the only place to retrieve Solaris packages, but with a nice large database (3500+ packages at time of writing), its quite beneficial to consume.

Getting Started with pkgutil
http://www.blastwave.org/jir/blastwave.fam


Mirrors
OpenCSW/Blastwave do not directly host packages... A number of mirror sites are available to get these, but you must set this in your pkgutil config file. This is typically located here: /etc/opt/csw/pkgutil.conf

To view a list of mirrors, visit The OpenCSW Mirror Page

When selecting a mirror, you must add '/stable' or '/unstable' to the end of the URL. Unstable packages will be more up to date, but may have bugs present. Stable, on the other hand, will have older packages but more robust.

Open your configuration file for editing and alter the "mirror" section. The below example is a stable UK mirror site.

Code Snippet

1. mirror=http://www.grangefields.co.uk/mirrors/csw/stable/

End of Code Snippet

Save the file and attempt to update the pkgutil catelog (Basically an index of all availalbe packages for a mirror).

Update the pkgutil catelog

Code Snippet

1. pkgutil -U

End of Code Snippet

Now the catelog is up to date, we can begin to use pkgutil to download and install packages.


Things to note
Ensure wget is in your system PATH (which wget)... pkgutil ships with it's own version, but most distributions of Solaris have a version located here: /usr/sfw/bin

Update pkgutil using the following command

Code Snippet

1. pkgutil -u pkgutil

End of Code Snippet

Install packages using the following (I.e. bash)

Code Snippet

1. pkgutil -i bash

End of Code Snippet