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Question Sam Hall · May 14

How to install IPM Registry offline

#InterSystems IRIS #InterSystems Package Manager (IPM)

What's the most straight-forward way to install this on an offline server? I'm trying to set this up on an Azure DevOps server to support our CI/CD pipelines. I've tried using zpm installing the tgz from the local filesystem. I note zpm seems to need a repo configured to install but I can't work out how to setup a bare-bones Filesystem repo (please point me to some documentation on this). I have no idea what I'm doing...

zpm:%SYS>install f:/tmp/zpm-registry-1.3.4.tgz 
  
ERROR! 'tmp' not found in any repository. 
zpm:%SYS>install zpm-registry-1.3.4.tgz 
  
ERROR! 'zpm-registry-1.3.4.tgz' not found in any repository. 
zpm:%SYS>install zpm-registry 
  
ERROR! 'zpm-registry' not found in any repository. 
zpm:%SYS>install "f:\tmp\zpm-registry-1.3.4.tgz" 
  
ERROR! 'f:\tmp\zpm-registry-1.3.4.tgz' not found in any repository. 
zpm:%SYS>list 
IPM (zpm) 0.10.6 
zpm:%SYS>repo 
  
  
1) Filesystem 
2) ORAS 
3) Remote Repository 
  
Which sort of repository do you wish to configure? 1 
Name:  local 
local 
        Source:                 F:\tmp\* 
        Enabled?                Yes 
        Available?              Yes 
        Use for Snapshots?      Yes 
        Use for Prereleases?    Yes 
        Is Read-Only?           No
  
local 
        Source:                 F:\tmp\* 
        Enabled?                Yes 
        Available?              Yes 
        Use for Snapshots?      Yes 
        Use for Prereleases?    Yes 
        Is Read-Only?           No

zpm:%SYS>install f:/tmp/zpm-registry-1.3.4.tgz 
  
ERROR! 'tmp' not found in any repository. 
zpm:%SYS>install zpm-registry-1.3.4.tgz 
  
ERROR! 'zpm-registry-1.3.4.tgz' not found in any repository. 
zpm:%SYS>install zpm-registry 
  
ERROR! 'zpm-registry' not found in any repository. 
zpm:%SYS>install "f:\tmp\zpm-registry-1.3.4.tgz" 
  
ERROR! 'f:\tmp\zpm-registry-1.3.4.tgz' not found in any repository. 
zpm:%SYS>info

Welcome to the Package Manager Shell (ZPM). Version: 0.10.6
Enter q/quit to exit the shell. Enter ?/help to view available commands
No registry configured
System Mode: <unset>
Mirror Status: NOTINIT
IRIS for Windows (x86-64) 2025.2 (Build 227U) Thu Jul 10 2025 11:01:07 EDT

Currently installed top-level modules are listed below:
IPM 0.10.6

Product version: IRIS 2025.2

Discussion (5)0

Comments

DC AI Bot · May 14 Bot

The straightest path shown in the available material is:

Install the built-in IPM client code if needed:

do $system.OBJ.Load($System.Util.InstallDirectory()_"dist/install/misc/zpm.xml","ck")

Then start the shell with:

zpm

Configure a repository, because install works only “from a configured repository.” The IPM command reference explicitly says:

repo “configures the current namespace to search for modules on a remote server or on the local file system.”
install “installs a module from a configured repository.”

1

If you want a purely local/offline workflow, the documented local mechanism in the retrieved material is to use a local directory and load a module from its manifest location. The docs state that modules can reside in “Local directories,” and give this example:

zpm:USER>load C:\InterSystems\IRISTest\ipm\mysample\1.0.0

It also says load is used to load the module into your local instance, specifying the location of the manifest file. 1

So, based on the returned documentation, the simplest offline approach is to place the unpacked module contents in a local directory containing module.xml, then use load <path> rather than trying to install a .tgz file path directly. 1

For a private-registry approach instead of direct local loading, the retrieved documents show that the supported pattern is to run zpm-registry, then point the client at that registry:

zpm:USER>install zpm-registry
zpm:USER>repo -n registry -r -url https://registry.yourdomain.com

The package page says you can “build your own private registry to have the option to install packages with ZPM client from your private registry,” and the setup article shows changing the client to that registry with:

zpm: USER>repo -n registry -r -url http://localhost:52773/registry/ -user <username> -pass <password>

After that, install modulename works against that configured registry. 2 3

For documentation on this:

General IPM usage, repositories, local directories, install, and load: Introduction to InterSystems Package Manager. 1
Private registry setup and how to point ZPM at it: Setting Up Your Own InterSystems ObjectScript Package Manager Registry. 3
zpm-registry package page and README link: zpm-registry. 2

What the retrieved docs do not show is a documented command for installing a .tgz artifact directly by filesystem path with install. Instead, they describe:

install modulename from a configured repository, and
load <directory> from a local module directory. 1

So for your exact case, the most straightforward documented options are:

use load from a local unpacked module directory containing module.xml, or
stand up a private zpm-registry and configure repo to point to it, then install modulename. 1 2 3

Sources:

1. Introduction to InterSystems Package Manager

2. zpm-registry

3. Setting Up Your Own InterSystems ObjectScript Package Manager Registry

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Evgeny Shvarov · May 15

Try 'load' command instead of 'install'

1 0

Sam Hall May 18 to Evgeny Shvarov

Thanks, yes that did it. So, I had to extract the tgz first, then simply "load f:/tmp/zpm-registry" (confirming that the folder zpm-registry contains module.xml. I assumed a Filesystem repository could contain tgz files and it would know what to do with them.
Or, to use "install zpm-registry" I can add a Filesystem repository that contains just this one folder "f:/tmp/zpm-registry". That's what threw me, I assumed a "repository" would contain multiple folders, or packaged modules in tgz format even.

zpm:USER>repo
 
 
1) Filesystem
2) ORAS
3) Remote Repository
 
Which sort of repository do you wish to configure? 1
Name:  zpm-registry
Root File Path: F:\tmp\zpm-registry
zpm-registry 1.3.4 @ F:\tmp\zpm-registry\
zpm-registry
        Source:                 F:\tmp\zpm-registry\*
        Enabled?                Yes
        Available?              Yes
        Use for Snapshots?      Yes
        Use for Prereleases?    Yes
        Is Read-Only?           No
 
zpm:USER>install zpm-registry
 
WARNING: The  resource tag is deprecated and may be removed in a future release of IPM.
         Please contact the package developer of zpm-registry to use  instead
WARNING: The {$dbrole}/${dbrole} expression is deprecated. Please contact package developer to use {$globalsDbRole} instead.
Building dependency graph...Done.
[USER|zpm-registry]     Initialize START
[USER|zpm-registry]     Initialize SUCCESS
[USER|zpm-registry]     Reload START (F:\tmp\zpm-registry\)
[USER|zpm-registry]     Reload SUCCESS
[zpm-registry]  Module object refreshed.
[USER|zpm-registry]     Validate START
[USER|zpm-registry]     Validate SUCCESS
[USER|zpm-registry]     Compile START
[USER|zpm-registry]     Compile SUCCESS
[USER|zpm-registry]     Activate START
[USER|zpm-registry]     Configure START
[USER|zpm-registry]     Configure SUCCESS
[USER|zpm-registry]     Activate SUCCESS
zpm:USER>

Happy days! Though, easier to just use "load" and skip the step to create the Filesystem repository entirely.

0 0

Dominic Chui May 19 to Sam Hall

You can call "load" directly on a tarball, but if you set up a file system repository, IPM expects the module to be untarred/unpacked into directories already.

1 0

Jani Hurskainen · May 20

This is how I have been setting up IRIS instance local filesystem registries. I'm still using an old 0.9.1 version so your version might behave differently.

The repository location is recorded by environment variable IPM_LOCAL_REGISTRY.

In ObjectScript shell %SYS namespace:

// install ipm
do $system.OBJ.Load("/path/to/zpm-0.9.1.xml","ck",.errorlog)
// setup local filesystem ipm registry
zwrite ##class(%IPM.Main).Shell("repo -name REPONAME -filesystem -depth 2 -path ${IPM_LOCAL_REGISTRY}")

A (minimized) bash script used to install module tarballs:

#!/bin/bash

declare -r tarball=${1}

declare -r workdir=$(mktemp --directory --tmpdir=/tmp ipm-module.XXXXXX)
trap "rm -rf ${workdir}" EXIT

declare -r manifest=${workdir}/module.xml

tar zxf ${tarball} -C ${workdir}

declare -r name=$(perl -ne 'if (m/<Name>(.*?)<\/Name>/) { print "$1"; last; }' ${manifest})
declare -r version=$(perl -ne 'if (m/<Version>(.*?)<\/Version>/) { print "$1"; last; }' ${manifest})

declare -r module_dir=${IPM_LOCAL_REGISTRY}/${name}/${version}

if [[ -d ${module_dir} ]]; then
  echo "Module ${name} version ${version} is already in the local registry"
  exit 0
fi

mkdir -p ${module_dir}
cp -r ${workdir}/* ${module_dir}

It will untar the tarball, figure out the module name and version from the manifest file and copy the sources to correctly named directory.

I also have other scripts that will fetch the tarballs from the actual artifact repository where the module tarballs are stored.

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