IPS manifest

Image Packaging System (IPS) manifest (.p5m) is a text file that defines the contents of an IPS package. It is part of the IPS software originally created for OpenSolaris and now used in Oracle Solaris 11, OpenIndiana, OmniOS and other descendants of OpenSolaris.

The process of building an IPS package starts with a simplified manifest file, to which tools are applied to fill in default values (pkgmogrify), add automatically determined dependencies (pkgdepend), and then add the hashes of the files in the package (pkgsend). The initial simplified manifest can be created manually, or generated by pkgsend from a SVR4 format package, a tarball, or a prototype directory hierarchy.

Manifest files are published as part of the package to either a online package repository or an IPS archive (.p5p) file.

Format
Files are in a plain text format, with one line for each action in a file, representing a file to install, a directory to create, users or groups to add to the system, dependencies on other packages to verify, or metadata to store with the package. The first entry in a line is the type of action, the rest of the line is a series of key=value pairs for that action.

Specifications

 * Oracle Solaris 11.2 man pages: pkg(5)
 * pkg(5): image packaging system: Manifest signing

Software

 * pkg(5): image packaging system

Sample files
Source manifests (before processing):
 * https://hg.java.net/hg/solaris~on-src/file/b23a4dab3d50/usr/src/pkg/manifests/

Complete manifests (after processing):
 * http://pkg.oracle.com/solaris/release/en/catalog.shtml?version=entire%400.5.11%2C5.11-0.175.2.1.0.2.1&action=Browse - click on Manifest links

Resources

 * Image Packaging System
 * Packaging and Delivering Software With the Image Packaging System in Oracle® Solaris 11.2