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Although used primarily by the ReST Installer, ReST packages are the means by which the ReST Application Suite is customized for individual pieces of software. The ReST package contains the software and metadata needed by the Installer to install software on remote machines. The package metadata is used by the Installer and Explorer to maintain the state of installed software and in future versions of ReST it will contain information needed to customize the Monitor to work with the installed packages. In order to produce a well-written package it is important to understand what is contained in the package and what conventions are expected by the ReST Suite.
A ReST package is essentially a ZIP/JAR file containing two special files, a package XML file and a checksum file. The package XML file, name package.xml inside the package, contains both basic metadata about the package and instructions on how to install the package from source or pre-compiled binaries. The checksum file, at this time must be created by the ReSTPackager program contains checksums of each file within the package and is must pass before the Installer will run the package. Details about the package sources are not necessary, since they could be any file that is pertinent to the software being installed. Details about writing the package XML, including documentation of each XML tag, and creating the package file appear later in this document.
It is possible to extract the package.xml file from the package using the jar utility supplied with the Sun JDK. The simplest means of extracting the package.xml is with the command jar -xvf <package name> package.xml. If you would like to extract the remainder of the contents, simply leave the package.xml off the end of the command. For more information see the Package Makers guide in the ReST online documentation section.