The Software Development Kit (SDK) has always been an unsupported collection of software. Over time, many unrelated packages were added that also weren’t supported, but were thought to be useful to customers. However, the SDK is no longer a “dumping ground,” as such; it has been slimmed down to include only those packages that are in line with the purpose of an SDK. It will remain unsupported as before.

The service tooling has picked up a new “extras” software channel. This channel has been added to contain software that users might find useful, but lacks Novell support. There’s not much in that channel at the moment, but it’s expected to expand. The software update “stack” has been modified to allow multiple, concurrently installed versions of a package. This is primarily intended for kernels, but there are likely to be more uses.

The command line software update tool (zypper) can now operate on RPMs from a pre-defined repository, an arbitrary Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), or a file on the local system, all with automatic dependency resolution. 

Here’s a quick look at some of the more noticeable changes in the package mix:

Added/updated:

• openAIS and Pacemaker replaced Heartbeat2 for HA clustering. A few pieces that were retained are useful regardless of the overall clustering technology used. The packages used for HA were moved to the new HA extension product (SLE HA 11).

• IBM Java 1.4.2 was updated to java-1_ 4_2-ibm-1.4.2_sr12.

• IBM java-1_6_0-ibm-1.6.0

• ruby-1.8.7: Note this isn’t Ruby on Rails, just the Ruby development language itself. Ruby on Rails and other so-called “Web 2.0” development tools are included with the SDK, which means they’re unsupported.

• File System in User Space (FUSE): While FUSE has been available since SLES 10, SLES 11 ships with several file systems that exploit it. Some examples are: