IPS is designed to install packages in an image. An image is a directory tree, and can be mounted in a variety of locations as needed. An image is one of the following three types:
In a full image, all dependencies are resolved within the image itself, and IPS maintains the dependencies in a consistent manner.
Non-global zone images are linked to a full image (the parent global zone image), but do not provide a complete system on their own. In a zone image, IPS maintains the non-global zone consistent with its global zone as defined by dependencies in the packages.
User images contain only relocatable packages.
In general, images are created or cloned by installers, beadm (1M) , or zonecfg (1M) , for example, rather than by pkg image-create.