SUMMARY: Roll Your Own Package Patches

Thanks to Julie L. Baumler for pointing out that patchadd(1M) _is_ 
actually a shell script. This makes reverse-engineering the patching 
process a lot easier.

And thanks to Serguei Borkov for pointing out,

  http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/806-7008/6jftmsc4t?a=view

The section in the "Aplication Packaging Developer's Guide" titled,
"Patching Packages." It explains some of the inner workings of the Sun
patch tools.

These are all good info, but if anyone out there has or comes across more
of a "how to" document, please pass it along, I'm not the only one interested
in this information. I did receive several emails from people who wanted
to be sure that I would share any good info that I received.

The question:
Crist Clark wrote:
> Crist Clark wrote:
> > 
> > The two recent security updates for OpenSSH and Sendmail forced us to
> > build and install updated versions of this software. It would be really,
> > really nice to be able to use Solaris's patchadd(1M) to patch our home-
> > rolled packages (these are "real" packages added with pkgadd(1M), just
> > pulled together with pkgproto(1), pkgmk(1), pkginfo(4), etc.).
> > 
> > My Googling has not gotten me anywhere on how to make your own Solaris
> > package patches. Anyone have some pointers to offer on documentation or
> > has figured out how to do this? Patchadd(1M) is a binary executable and
> > reading the various scripts in the patch packages just isn't getting
> > me anywhere either.
>
> I have already received a bunch of responses with pointer on how to make
> Solaris packages. Thank you for your prompt replies, BUT...
>
> We _already have made_ home-grown Solaris packages and installed them.
> What we want to do is use patchadd(1M) to add the fixed files to the
> packages rather than deinstalling and reinstalling.
>
> To repeat, we want to build PATCHES that work with patchadd(1M) (although
> building packages is still subset of making patches, we are already very
> adept at that).
>
> FWIW, what we ended up doing was reapplying the packge with the same name
> and just containing updated files (setting MAXINST > 1). But you end up
> with something like,
>
>   # pkginfo | fgrep OURsndm
>   OURsndm       Sendmail 8.12.9
>   OURsndm.2     Sendmail 8.12.9-patch
>
> Which is OK for now, but we would much rather use patchadd(1M).
>
> Actually, the issue is that the other administrators are familiar and
> comfortable with patchadd(1M), and trying to get them to do the above
> or other kinds of tricks with the pkg* tools makes them cranky, makes
> them bother me with lots of questions, and I get blamed if _anything_
> breaks on the system for the next few weeks. I want to give them a
> patchadd(1M) patch.
-- 
Crist J. Clark                               crist.clark@globalstar.com
Globalstar Communications                                (408) 933-4387
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