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5
Using External Software
External Software is software not installed and managed by the Package Manager. It is either already
installed before you begin managing software with Package Manager, or it is software you choose to
install individually.
About External Software
External Software is used to define the attributes by which software that was not installed by Package
Manager as part of a package is identified on target machines.
Identifying externally managed software is required to ensure the proper processing of dependencies and
conflicts when a package is installed on a machine where software was not installed by Package Manager.
If external software is not properly identified, you may install a second copy of an application because it
was specified as a dependency in a package, or you may install a package on a machine where externally
installed software was identified as conflicting with the package.
When adding entries to the external software list, the naming of the applications follows the same naming
conventions as a regular package (<externalpackagename>_<version>_<architecture>), but each one
contains one or more user-defined attributes rather than files. Once added to the list, the entries are
referred to in this documentation as external software packages.
External software package attributes serve as external package definitions. Each attribute consists of an
attribute name and value. The name is selected from the drop-down list, and the value is added to the text
box.
When the external software list is published to the repository, the file name is Repository.options. The file
is published to the .hive folder in the repository files. Each repository can contain only one
Repository.options file. Therefore, the published Repository.options file list should contain definitions of
all the applications you are using as dependencies and specifying as conflicts for software packages
managed by the repository.
Best Practices
When you add a dependency or specify a conflict in any package, you should define the external software
attributes for each depends or conflicts package. This practice ensures that machines where applications
are already installed will be properly processed by Package Manager at installation time.
If an application has not been defined in the external software list and it was not installed by Package
Manager, the following may occur:
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