Oracle Introduces First CBE Release of Solaris

Oracle has released the first Common Build Environment release of Oracle Solaris 11.4. The CBE releases can be regarded as pre-releases of Solaris for open source developers, among others.

With the Common Build Environment releases, Oracle aims to bring new features and improvements for Solaris versions to more systems faster. The intention is that open source developers and people who use the OS for personal use in non-production environments can then get to work with current versions of the software.

According to Darren Moffat, software architect at Oracle, there is a need for a pre-release build of Solaris because the operating system now has a continuous delivery model of microreleases with Support Repository Updates. “With that move, many of the new features added to Oracle Solaris 11.4 will no longer be available in a release licensed for non-production use.”

Not all fixes from an upcoming SRU release are part of a CBE release, but because they are cumulative updates, they will contain all the improvements from previous SRUs anyway. Oracle Solaris 11.4.0 GA users can switch to CBE with a simple pkg update, Oracle promises. Solaris acquired that company in 2009 with the acquisition of Sun Microsystems.