This is an attempt, using pure sh, to create a software building and packaging system for Solaris 10 (and maybe other versions) on an UltraSPARC II system (my test system is an Ultra 60).

It is based loosely around a combination of both Arch's makepkg system and FreeBSD's ports tree.

It is very much a work in progress and liable to break any time.

How it works

Package compilation is based around a reasonably simple POSIX sh script (NOT a bash script, so many things you may be used to just aren't there!). The script contains two main sections.

Declarations and Definitions

These are a list of shell variables that describe the package:

VERSION - The version number of the package
PACKAGE - The name of the package (must be the same as the package directory name)
CATEGORY - The category the package is in (must be the same as the directory the package directory resides in)
SRC - The source filename once downloaded - not needed for GIT downloads
URL - The URL to get the source from (see below)
DEPENDS - A list of packages that should be compiled and installed before this one.

Operational Functions

These do the actual work of compiling the sofware. Three are essential:

configure() - Configure the source (usually running ./configure etc)
build() - Compile the source
install() - Install it to ${DESTDIR}

Compiling a Package

Simply run makepkg in a package folder and it should compile into a standard Solaris package file for you. There are some command line options:

-i : Install the package after compiling it.
-s : Compile and install any dependencies of this package first before compiling this package
-f : Force a clean rebuild of the package from scratch