Project Indiana Release Brings New Package Manager

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—Project Indiana, Sun Microsystems Linux-like OpenSolaris effort, will begin shipping to developers before the end of October, the company announced Oct. 15 at its open-source summit press event here.

The developer release will include Image Packaging System, a new package manager slated for inclusion in the next version of Solaris, but wont be back-ported to Solaris 10, the most recent version to ship, said Ian Murdock, Suns chief operating systems platform strategist, in an address to the media.

All of the technology developed under Project Indiana will be delivered through OpenSolaris going forward, he said.

The full release is expected in March.

Project Indiana is a Sun project designed to create an OpenSolaris binary distribution that will focus on providing a single CD install with the basic core operating system and desktop environment, along with the opportunity of installing additional software off network repositories.

The new IPS is an attempt to design and implement a software delivery system that interacts with a network repository as its primary design goal, according to a post on the OpenSolaris Web site. “Other key ideas are the safe execution for zones and other installation contexts; using the ZFS (Zettabyte File System) for efficiency and rollback; preventing the introduction of incorrect or incomplete packages; and efficient use of bandwidth,” it says.

The GNU Userland is also being more tightly integrated with OpenSolaris, which will be the delivery vehicle for all new Solaris technology.

Sun is actively working to bring more developers into the Solaris ecosystem, and one of Indianas goals is to make Solaris, and the features and functionality it offers, more familiar and accessible to people, Murdock said.

Read here about ZFS for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apples upcoming version of its OS X operating system.

While some of Suns competitors have been acquiring the top Linux development talent, Murdock said Sun is more concerned about growing the user base, which means concentrating on delivering a great product.

Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis in programming environments and developer tools.