A sealed package is one in which some or all dependencies (including the autopackage support code) are placed within the package such that no downloads are required to complete the installation. It's useful to make one when your users may not be online or when you don't want to rely on network dep resolution. Currently there is no mechanism to tell autopackage to not download anything at all, so if a dependency is not found within the sealed package, the support code will still try to resolve the dependency from the net.
One thing to be careful of is the GTK+ frontend. If only the support code (autopackage.tar.bz2) is included in the sealed package, the support code would try to download and install the GTK+ front end automatically. So it is recommended that you include autopackage-gtk package as well, if you want a truly offline installation.
The dependency packages must be located in the source tree within the `autopackage/packages' directory. The makepackage script will detect the packages directory and move the contents into the package.
Looking at inkscape for an example to create a sealed installer:
Prepare section in the apspec file states: require @gtk.org/gtk 2.4 require @gnome.org/libxml 2.0 require @libsigc.sourceforge.net/libsigc 3 require @libpng.org/libpng 3 require @gtkmm.org/gtkmm2 3 require @zlib.org/zlib 1
Add to `autopackage/packages' directory by downloading the available autopackage of the applications for the interface required or you need to build the package and skeleton file. Do not forget to download and add the support code and autopackage-gtk package also.
@gtk.org/gtk 2.4 --> core component not packaged @gnome.org/libxml 2.0 --> core component not packaged @libsigc.sourceforge.net/libsigc 3 --> libsigc++-2.0.3.x86.package @libpng.org/libpng 3 --> core component not packaged @gtkmm.org/gtkmm2 3 --> glibmm-2.4.4.x86.package @zlib.org/zlib 1 --> core component not packaged autopackage.tar.bz2 --> most recently released archive autopackage-gtk-1.0.x86.package --> most recently released package
At the moment there is no difference between a sealed installer versus including the same files in the directory where the main application package is located. In the future there will a more differences in using a sealed installer such as installing a private autopackage support code for the application which does not touch the rest of the system. The private copy of the support code would be removed along with its application.