Blastwave: Open Source Solaris Package Management System

I was looking to upgrade a few packages installed from Sunfreeware.com when I stumbled upon Blastwave.org. Blastwave.org is a "community software" (CSW) site which emulates the Debian apt-get system for installing Solaris packages.

Once you install the pkg-get package, you can install Solaris software as easily as this:

pkg-get install mutt

Pkg-get installs the dependencies and the desired package. The executable's home is /opt/csw/bin, unlike /usr/local/bin for packages installed from Sunfreeware.com.

Here is a comparison of how mutt, from Blastwave.org, and OpenSSH, from Sunfreeware, appear to pkginfo:

bash-2.03$ pkginfo | grep mutt

system      CSWmutt              mutt - Command line email reader with IMAP and SSL support

bash-2.03$ pkginfo | grep ssh 

application SMCossh              openssh

Perusing the mailing list archive, it seems users are enthusiastic. I hope this project continues to improve and update its package selection.

Keep in mind that software installed from Sunfreeware is ignored by Blastwave.org. For example, installing mutt resulted in a second installation of OpenSSL:

bash-2.03$ pkginfo | grep ssh 

application SMCossh              openssh

bash-2.03$ pkginfo | grep ssl

system      CSWossl              openssl - OpenSSL Secure Sockets Layer lib and utilities

application SMCossl              openssl