Image Packaging System


The Image Packaging System, also known as IPS or pkg, is a cross-platform package management system created by the OpenSolaris community in coordination with Sun Microsystems. It is used by Solaris 11, several illumos-based distributions: OpenIndiana, OmniOS, XStreamOS and a growing number of layered applications, including GlassFish, across a variety of OS platforms.

Features

Features include:
The fact that IPS delivers each single file in a separate shelf with a separate checksum, a package update only needs to replace files that have been modified. For ELF binaries, it computes checksums only from the loaded parts of an ELF binary; this permits e.g. to avoid to update an ELF binary that changed only the ELF comment section.

Trade offs

Due to the fact that IPS delivers each single file in a separate shelf, slow operation is caused when the input source is on a medium with high latency.