Given the goals and ideas described above, IPS introduces the general concept of software self-assembly: Any collection of installed software on a system should be able to build itself into a working configuration when that system is booted, by the time the packaging operation completes, or at software runtime.
Software self-assembly eliminates the need for install-time scripting in IPS. The software is responsible for its own configuration, rather than relying on the packaging system to perform that configuration on behalf of the software. Software self-assembly also enables the packaging system to safely operate on alternate images, such as boot environments that are not currently booted, or offline zone roots. In addition, since the self-assembly is performed only on the running image, the package developer does not need to cope with cross-version or cross-architecture runtime contexts.
Some operating system image preparation must be done before boot, and IPS manages this transparently. Image preparation includes updating boot blocks, preparing a boot archive (ramdisk), and, on some architectures, managing the menu of boot choices.