Preface

The Application Packaging Developer's Guide provides step-by-step instructions and relevant background information for designing, building, and verifying packages. This guide also includes information on and examples of advanced techniques that you may find helpful during the package creation process.

Who Should Use This Book

This book is intended for application developers whose responsibilities include designing and building packages.

Though much of the book is directed towards novice package developers, it also contains information useful to more experienced package developers.

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Note -

The term "x86" refers to the Intel 8086 family of microprocessor chips, including the Pentium and Pentium Pro processors and compatible microprocessor chips made by AMD and Cyrix. In this document the term "x86" refers to the overall platform architecture, whereas "Intel Platform Edition" appears in the product name.

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How This Book Is Organized

Chapter 1, Designing a Package, describes package components, package design criteria, and related commands, files, and scripts.

Chapter 2, Building a Package, describes the process and required tasks for building a package, and provides step-by-step instructions for each task.

Chapter 3, Enhancing the Functionality of a Package, describes how to add optional features to a package, and provides step-by-step instructions for each.

Chapter 4, Verifying and Transferring a Package, describes how to verify the integrity of a package and transfer a package to a distribution medium.

Chapter 5, Package Creation Case Studies, provides case studies for creating packages.

Chapter 6, Advanced Package Creation Techniques, describes various advanced package creation techniques.

Glossary is a list of words and phrases found in this book and their definitions.

Related Books

The following documentation may provide additional background information on building System V packages.

• Solaris Porting Guide

• System V Application Binary Interface

• System V Application Binary Interface - SPARC Processor Supplement

• System V Application Binary Interface - Intel386 Processor Supplement

• System V Application Binary Interface - MIPS Processor Supplement

• System V Application Binary Interface - Motorola 88000 Processor Supplement

Ordering Sun Documents

The SunDocs^SM program provides more than 250 manuals from Sun Microsystems, Inc. If you live in the United States, Canada, Europe, or Japan, you can purchase documentation sets or individual manuals using this program.

For a list of documents and how to order them, see the catalog section of the SunExpress^TM Internet site at http://www.sun.com/sunexpress.

What Typographic Changes Mean

The following table describes the typographic changes used in this book.

Table P-1 Typographic Conventions

Typeface or Symbol	Meaning	Example
AaBbCc123	The names of commands, files, and directories; on-screen computer output	Edit your .login file. Use ls -a to list all files. machine_name% You have mail.
AaBbCc123	What you type, contrasted with on-screen computer output	machine_name% su Password:
AaBbCc123	Command-line placeholder: replace with a real name or value	To delete a file, type rm filename.
AaBbCc123	Book titles, new words or terms, or words to be emphasized	Read Chapter 6 in User's Guide. These are called class options. You must be root to do this.

Shell Prompts in Command Examples

The following table shows the default system prompt and superuser prompt for the C shell, Bourne shell, and Korn shell.

Table P-2 Shell Prompts

Shell	Prompt
C shell prompt	machine_name%
C shell superuser prompt	machine_name#
Bourne shell and Korn shell prompt	$
Bourne shell and Korn shell superuser prompt	#