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.

Note -

The Solaris operating environment runs on two types of hardware, or platforms--SPARC and IA. The Solaris operating environment runs on both 64-bit and 32-bit address spaces. The information in this document pertains to both platforms and address spaces unless called out in a special chapter, section, note, bullet, figure, table, example, or code example.

How This Book Is Organized

The following table describes the chapters in this book.

Chapter Name	Chapter Description
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	Contains a list of words and phrases found in this book and their definitions

Related Books

The following documentation, available through retail book sellers, may provide additional background information on building System V packages.

System V Application Binary Interface
System V Application Binary Interface - SPARC Processor Supplement
System V Application Binary Interface - Intel386 Processor Supplement

Ordering Sun Documents

Fatbrain.com, an Internet professional bookstore, stocks select product documentation from Sun Microsystems, Inc.

For a list of documents and how to order them, visit the Sun Documentation Center on Fatbrain.com at http://www1.fatbrain.com/documentation/sun.

Accessing Sun Documentation Online

The docs.sun.com^SM Web site enables you to access Sun technical documentation online. You can browse the docs.sun.com archive or search for a specific book title or subject. The URL is http://docs.sun.com.

What Typographic Conventions Mean

The following table describes the typographic conventions 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. Do not save changes yet.

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	`#`