given that I found the cache of downloaded IPS files (this is omnios), how could I extract the contents of one of them? Google says "pkgtrans" but that's not working at all.

the downloaded files are just zlib compressed and named for the hash of their content

there is no downloaded package, per se, unless you explicit generate a p5p archive

hmm. I tried gunzip against it

but for example, system/headers package -- it's one file that supposedly contains hundreds of files. I'd like to do the equivalent of "tar -xf " and get everything extracted in place

pkgrecv --raw might be close to what you want.

Right the system/headers package is not "one file" at any point, unless you create that file yourself. sommerfeld has the answer you probably want

the manifest associated with the file seems to be what I want

I know I could cherry pick the files listed in the manifest from the installed system but that's a pain I'm trying to avoid

let me check out pkgrecv

doh. the file I am trying to manipulate *is* the manifest. "file" said it was some assembly code but it's just text

making another attempt at getting the actual package