The rest of this chapter discusses the software needed to build and package OpenSolaris. If you are only interested in looking at the sources, editing them, and sending your patches to others, you can skip this material; no special packages are required to view and edit the sources. We do recommend, however, that if you are installing Solaris for the first time on a system you plan to use for development, you install the "Entire" cluster (SUNWCall) because this will save you a good deal of time if you later decide you want to build OpenSolaris components. Other distributions may offer different installation options; consult your vendor's documentation.

We strongly recommend installing the "Entire" package cluster (SUNWCall) on all development, build, and test systems. Although systems with the Developer (SUNWCdev) package cluster installed may work, this configuration has not been tested and will not be evaluated or recommended. Additionally, you should obtain and install the SUNWonbld package, which contains prebuilt versions of the tools in usr/src/tools needed to build OpenSolaris components. If you prefer, you can instead use nightly(1) with the '-t' option to build these tools (see 4.2 Using nightly and bldenv) when building ON, but installing the package is recommended to avoid dependency problems and is required for other consolidations. SUNWonbld can be downloaded from http://opensolaris.org/os/downloads/on/. Finally, you will need to obtain and install the Sun Studio compilers, dmake, and other tools. You can obtain these tools from http://opensolaris.org/os/community/tools/sun_studio_tools/.

If you install and use a full installation (for example, Solaris or Solaris Express CDs or DVDs), you will have a complete matching set of programs, libraries, and kernel components. However, if you later upgrade the ON bits using a method such as BFU (see 5.3 Using BFU to Install ON) or Install (see 5.2 Using Cap-Eye-Install to Install Kernels), or want to build and copy in your own updated versions of a few files, you may need to install newer versions of one or more system packages first. When this happens, it is known as a Flag Day. You can find more information about Flag Days in 5.1.3 Flag Days and Other Hazards.