Publishers, Repositories, and Package Archives

A publisher identifies a person or organization that provides one or more packages. Publishers can distribute their packages using package repositories or package archives. Publishers can be configured into a preferred search order. When a package installation command is given and the package specification does not include the publisher name, the first publisher in the search order is searched for that package. If a match of the specified package FMRI pattern is not found, the second publisher in the search order is searched, and so forth until the package is found or all publishers have been searched.

A repository is a location where packages are published and from where packages are retrieved. The location is specified by a Universal Resource Identifier (URI). A catalog is the list of all the packages in a repository.

A package archive is a file that contains publisher information and one or more packages provided by that publisher.