The structural life cycle of a package

The material covered in this topic talks about package object pathnames. While reading, keep in mind that a package object resides in three places while being packaged and installed. To help you avoid confusion, consider which of the three possible locations are being discussed:

On a development machine

Packages originate on a development machine. They can be in the same directory structure on your machine as they will be placed on the installation machine. pkgmk(1) can also locate components on the development machine and give them different pathnames on the installation machine.

On the installation media

When pkgmk copies the package components from the development machine to the installation medium, it places them into the structure you defined in your prototype(4) file and a format that pkgadd(1M) recognizes.

On the installation machine

pkgadd copies a package from the installation medium and places it in the structure defined in your prototype file. Package objects can be defined as relocatable, meaning the installer can define the actual location of these package objects on the installation machine during installation. Objects with fixed locations are copied to their predefined path.