RPM 6.0.0

Visit https://rpm.org/releases/6.0.0 for the release notes and download information.

RPM 6.0.0 BETA2

Visit https://rpm.org/releases/5.99.92 for the release notes and download information.

RPM 6.0.0 BETA

This is the first beta release of 6.0 and is mainly about documentation and finalizing the v6 file format.

What's Changed

• Several new man-pages (#3612)
• Python module isolation support (RhBug:2327289)
• Signature related fixes and enhancements
• Scriptlet failures are reflected in transaction return code again (#2581)

The tarball is available at https://rpm.org/releases/6.0.0 and is also attached below as a convenience.

RPM 6.0.0 ALPHA

What's Changed

Overview

• RPM defaults to enforcing signature checking (#1573)
• RPM uses the full key ID or fingerprint to identify OpenPGP keys everywhere (#2403)
• Support for multiple OpenPGP signatures per package (#3385)
• Support for updating previously imported keys (#2577)
• Support for both RPM v4 and v6 packages
• Support for installing RPM v3 packages has been removed (#1107)
• By default, RPM no longer verifies obsolete crypto (MD5, SHA1, DSA) (#1292)
• Man page overhaul (work in progress as of 6.0 alpha)
• Pristine and verifiable release tarballs (#3565) (#2702)

General Use

• Several enhancements to rpmkeys(8):
  • rpmkeys --import can now be used to update keys (#2577). This also updates the key handle from a short ambiguous key id to full fingerprint.
  • rpmkeys --export added for exporting keys
  • rpmkeys --checksig, --list, --delete use and expect full fingerprint of the keys (#3360)
  • rpmkeys works identically with all keystore backends
  • rpmkeys --rebuild can be used to rebuild the keystore contents and move between different keystore backends (#3347)
• Several enhancements to rpmsign(1):
  • rpmsign can use either GnuPG or Sequoia-sq for signing (controlled by %_openpgp_sign macro (gpg or sq))
  • rpmsign --addsign always adds a new signature (arbitrary number of signatures supported now)
  • rpmsign --resign replaces all existing signatures with a new one
• New query tag extensions (e.g. with --qf <format>):
  • rpmformat for determining package format version (3/4/6)
  • openpgp for managing all supported OpenPGP signature types
• New --filemime query alias for querying per-file MIME info
• Consistent terminology and case usage in signature and key messages
  • OpenPGP signatures are called OpenPGP in output
  • RPM v3 header+payload signatures are called "legacy" in output
• Man page overhaul (WIP):
  • Update all manual pages to a new consistent style (#3669)
  • Add man pages for all major components and file formats (#3612)
  • Move end-user commands to section 1
  • Many previously undocumented things covered, many errors fixed

Packaging

• rpmbuild(1) now supports generating two different package formats (controlled by %_rpmformat macro):
  • RPM v6
    • All file sizes and related limits are 64bit
    • Crypto modernization
    • MIME file info
    • Widely compatible with RPM >= 4.14
  • RPM v4
    • Bit-per-bit compatible with packages produced by RPM 4.x
• rpmbuild(1) can now automatically sign packages if %_openpgp_autosign_id macro is defined (#2678)
• New command rpm-setup-autosign(1) added for easy auto-signing configuration (#3522)
• New %{span:...} macro to make defining multi-line macros nicer
• New %{xdg:...} macro for evaluating XDG base directories
• Fix architecture checking accidentally moved after build (#3569)
• Fix buildsys specific %prep section not accepted (#3635)
• Fix check-rpaths brp script when both RPATH and RUNPATH exist (#3667)
• brp-elfperms buildroot policy script was removed (#3195)

API Changes

• New functions related to rpmKeyring:
  • rpmKeyringInitIterator(), rpmKeyringIteratorNext(), rpmKeyringIteratorFree() for iterating over keyring contents
  • rpmKeyringVerifySig2()
  • rpmKeyringLookupKey() for finding a key in a keyring
  • rpmKeyringModify()
• New functions related to rpmPubkey:
  • rpmPubkeyFingperint(), rpmPubkeyFingerprintAsHex(), rpmPubkeyKeyIDAsHex() and rpmPubkeyArmorWrap() accessors
  • rpmPubkeyMerge() for merging two pubkeys describing the same key
• New functions for managing transaction permanent keystore:
  • rpmtxnImportPubkey() for importing keys
  • rpmtxnDeletePubkey() for deleting pubkey's from transaction keystore
  • rpmtxnRebuildKeystore() for rebuilding transaction keystore
• New flags to control rpmSign() operation added: RPMSIGN_FLAG_RESIGN, RPMSIGN_FLAG_RPMV4, RPMSIGN_FLAG_RPMV6
• New identifiers related to multiple signature support added:
  • RPMTAG_OPENPGP rpm tag
  • RPMSIGTAG_OPENPGP signature header tag (alias to RPMTAG_OPENPGP)
  • RPMVSF_NOOPENPGP verification flag
• New rpm tags: RPMTAG_PAYLOADSIZE, RPMTAG_PAYLOADSIZEALT, RPMTAG_RPMFORMAT, RPMTAG_FILEMIMEINDEX, RPMTAG_MIMEDICT, RPMTAG_FILEMIMES
• New identifiers related to SHA-3 added: RPM_HASH_SHA3_256, RPM_HASH_SHA3_512
• New symbols related to MIME types in v6 packages:
  • rpmfilesFMime(), rpmfiFMime() for retrieving per-file MIME info
  • RPMFI_NOFILEMIME flag to control behavior
• New OpenPGP identifiers related to RFC-9580 added
• rpmtsAddInstallElement() returns 3 on unsupported package format

Internal Improvements

• RPM is now built as C++20 code (except for plugins and Python bindings)
  • More background available in the initial announcement
  • All relevant sources have been renamed to .cc or .hh extension
  • Many dynamic data structures moved to STL and other similar refactorings
• Numerous improvements to the test-suite
  • Simplify test creation
• Add an actual keystore abstraction
• New openpgp.cert.d based keystore (experimental) (#3341)
• New make site build target for easy local rendering of documentation
• Make reference counting atomic throughout the codebase
• Fix keystore reads lacking transaction lock
• Fix a race condition in rpmioMkpath() (#3508)
• Fix recursion depth for macro error message (#3197)
• Fix empty password field in passwd/group causing entry to be ignored (#3594)
• Fix built-in macros not usable before loading macro files (#3638)
• Drop gpg(keyid) provides from gpg-pubkey headers (#3360)
• Eliminate various internal symbols accidentally leaking to the ABI
• Optimize rpmlog() locking

Building RPM

• A C++20 compiler is now required in addition to a C99 compiler, but C++20 modules support is not required.
• scdoc man page generator is now required for building RPM
• Pre-built API documentation is no longer shipped in the release tarballs. Building it is optional, but Doxygen is required for doing so. Pre-built API documentation for all releases can be found in https://ftp.rpm.org/api/

Compatibility Notes

Package format

• Support for installing RPM v3 packages has been removed. (#1107) They can still be queried and also unpacked with rpm2cpio(1).
• RPM v4 packages remain fully supported, but:
  • In the default configuration, packages built with RPM < 4.14.0 cannot be verified due to their use of weak, obsolete MD5 and SHA1 digests. For strongly signed packages, this can be worked around by changing %_pkgverify_level to signature so the weak digests are simply ignored. If verifying the weak digests is necessary, the RPM 4.x behavior can be restored by setting %_pkgverify_flags to 0.
• RPM v6 packages
  • Can be queried with RPM >= 4.6
  • Can be unpacked with RPM >= 4.12
  • Can be verified and installed with RPM >= 4.14 (with caveats/limitations)
• Lua posix.fork() family of calls, deprecated in 4.20, is disabled in packages built with RPM >= 6.0. They continue to function in packages built by RPM <= 4.20 however.

Other

• Package signing key configuration differs from the past. To support other implementations besides GnuPG, the signer ID is now set via %_openpgp_sign_id macro, which defaults to %{?_gpg_name} for backwards compatibility.
• The low-level package signing macros are now parametric, any custom %__gpg_sign_cmd overrides will simply not work as such. Users are encouraged to look into dropping such overrides rather than just updating, most such overrides haven't been necessary in a long time.
• %_passwd_path and %_group_path are now treated as colon separated paths to allow using multiple files as the source of NSS information (e.g. with nss-altfiles)
• --pkgid and --hdrid query sources CLI-switches have been dropped (#2633)

The tarball is available at htt...

RPM 4.20.1

This is primarily a bugfix release addressing a handful of regressions in RPM 4.20.0 as well as various other issues.

What's Changed

Enhancements

• Packaging: Add support for fully locked user accounts (via the new u! flag) in sysusers.d(5) files (#3450).
• Building: RPM release tarballs (.tar.bz2) are now generated in a reproducible and hermetic environment using GitHub Actions (#2702).

Fixes

• Command-Line: Fix a regression where rpmsign(8) could corrupt the packages on signing operations (affected RPM >= 4.18.1) (#3469).
• Command-Line: Fix a regression where rpmspec(8) would emit extra output in query mode for BuildSystem specs (#3413).
• Command-Line: Fix rpmdb --exportdb failing when the database is on read-only media (#1266).
• Command-Line: Fix rpmkeys(8) failing when no keys are present in the keyring (#3378).
• Command-Line: It was possible to sign files in .src.rpm packages with rpmsign(8), which has been corrected (#3470).
• Transactions: Fix unmodified %config files (and possibly more if %_minimize_writes is enabled) being removed in case of an unpack failure (affected RPM >= 4.14.0) (#3284).
• Transactions: Fix sqlite rpmdb growing over time (#3309).
• Transactions: Lua deprecation warnings were also shown for packages built with an RPM version where the functions weren't yet deprecated, which has been corrected (#3270).
• Transactions: Packages without RPMTAG_ARCH or RPMTAG_OS are not legitimate packages but were still possible to install, which has been corrected (#3344).
• Packaging: Fix a regression where manual invocation of %debug_package caused problems when invoked in spec files directly (#3290).
• Packaging: Fix a regression where an empty build directory was left behind on rpmbuild -bs (#3382).
• Packaging: Fix a regression in build-id generation from compressed ELF files (#3463).
• Packaging: Fix a race condition when running multiple rpmbuild(8) instances in parallel with a non-existent %{_tmppath} (#3508).
• Packaging: Fix symlinked .la files not getting removed from the buildroot (#3304).
• Packaging: Fix brp-strip in regex-unsafe buildroots (#3492).
• Plugins: Source packages triggered plugin hooks when unpacked with rpm -i, which has been corrected (#3470).
• Plugins: Don't let the IMA plugin fail the transaction if it's running in a rootless container where IMA isn't supported (#3234).
• Plugins: Fix unshare plugin failure when installing to a chroot (#3187).
• Configuration: When editing a macro file in place, the text editor may place a backup file (e.g. with the ~ suffix) in the same directory, causing RPM to load it at startup and possibly override the original macro definitions. To help prevent that, RPM now ignores filenames with non-alphanumeric characters when looking for macro files to load (#3373).
• Documentation: Man pages have seen various formatting and punctuation fixes (#3511).

The tarball is available at https://rpm.org/wiki/Releases/4.20.1 and is also attached below as a convenience.

RPM releases tracked on rpm.org

RPM releases are tracked at http://rpm.org/timeline

Official RPM source releases are available at http://ftp.rpm.org/releases/, do not use GitHub provided tarballs as they are missing auto-generated content and require many more dependencies to build.