The standard software delivered with UNIX systems is not always sufficient. Commercial software is often very specific and expensive. On the other hand, there exist a lot of useful freely available UNIX packages such as editors, window managers, document formatting utilities, drawing tools, etc., which are distributed under source form.
ASIS (the Application Software Installation Server) provides an environment that offers a large number of freely available UNIX applications which are useful for day-to-day work. It frees end-users from having to get, configure, generate, install and manage the software. It also offers tools to system maintainers to generate and install those packages.
ASIS has three logical entities. =0pt=0pt=0pt The repository is the central part of the project. It contains the applications in an executable format. The included packages cover a large variety of domains: High Energy Physics (HEP) data analysis software, the CERN Program Library, most GNU packages, the latest TeX/LaTeX setup, MIT X-windows contributions, TCL/TK based software and many other tools written by the UNIX community. Presently, the system allows users access to more than 400 products for seven different platforms on SUN, DEC, IBM, SGI and HP computers. Soon nine platforms will be supported. A data base describing all packages with version control information is maintained in the repository.
The client interface is the more visible part. In order to gain access to software on ASIS from a computer, the only change in the system setup is to schedule the execution of an ASISUpdate script each time the repository is updated.
A tools suite helps product maintainers keep their packages up-to-date. The provided tools automate the generation and installation process with quality and reliability receiving maximum attention.