[csw-maintainers] Replacing existing Solaris functionality by OpenCSW packages

[Dagobert Michelsen]

Hi,

continuing the discussion about CUPS it would be nice to have
a standardized method of replacing certain subsystems of Solaris
with the corresponding OpenCSW packages.

The idea is to have a base set of packages working simply as
add-on which lives in the standard /opt/csw location (this is
what we have now). To replace the existing Solaris subsystem
an additional package is provided which links from the standard
Solaris locations like /usr/bin to the OpenCSW binaries. This
package depends on the CSW packages and is marked incompatible
to the Solaris packages taking up the locations of the CSW links.

As there is a "install all" option in pkg-get which is used it
is adviseable to not install these replacemenet-packages by
default. This may be accomplished by one of the following
solutions:

- Different prefix

The addons would be named CSWX... to mark that they are Xtra
to install. On the contra side these exclusion must be
hardwired to pkg* tools.

- Different catalog

The extra packages may be put in a separate catalog. This
required a complete duplication of the current/s|i/5.x/
directory structure and could be intergated by catalog
overlays alreaddy present in pkgutil.


Packages which could profit from these concepts are
- OpenSSH (replacing Sun SSH)
- CUPS (replacing Sys V printing)
- sendmail (replacing Sun sendmail)


Feedback welcome!


Best regards

   --Dago