Do you know, where you can get ready made freeware packages to run on Solaris from?
I got a few from sunfreeware.com recently.
Do you think, you can only install Solaris packages as root?
Of course, it’s simpler and just better to do so,
but what if you can’t?
Solaris packages from sunfreeware.com come as gzipped files,
and I use pkgtrans in order to get pkginfo, pkgmap, and a subdirectory reloc created below my $HOME/PACKAGES/ .
pkgmap is described in the manual page protype(4) ,
it defines details like file mode, symlinks, and much more.
Within that subdirectory reloc you find the package’s executables, library files and man pages.
The sys admin would use pkgadd for installing a package,
but pkgadd only allows for execution by root,
so I developed a shell script (JHread_pkgmap.sh) imitating pkgadd.
It reads pkgmap and does jobs like adopting the file mode specified within pkgmap.
I don’t plan on implementing pkgadd‘s full functionality,
but just that subset, that is seriously required in order to get the packages installed, that I really want to install.
Of course, executables and libraries, that depend on hard-wired absolute file or directory pathnames will experience a little grief.
But most of the utilities, I am working with, don’t complain about such problems.
Now e.g. I am able to download and install ready made packages (wget, curl, …); and you know, how much nicer it can be to use wget and curl than downloading within a web browser.
Update 2013-01-02:
Please find it here: http://Jochen.Hayek.name/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Unix/Shell/JHread_pkgmap.sh