RPM Package Manager

The RPM Package Manager (RPM) is a powerful package management system capable of

  • building computer software from source into easily distributable packages
  • installing, updating and uninstalling packaged software
  • querying detailed information about the packaged software, whether installed or not
  • verifying integrity of packaged software and resulting software installation

News

RPM 4.19.0 released (Sep 19 2023)

  • See release notes for details and download information
  • Highlights include:
    • New spec snippet support for dynamic spec generation
    • New sysusers.d(5) integration for automated user and group handling
    • Proper shell-like globbing and escaping in %files and CLI
    • Memory and address-space aware build resource allocation
    • Platform detection fixes and improvements for x86 CPUs
    • Chroot handling fixes
    • New CMake build system
    • Export of RPM libraries for CMake’s find_package()
    • Adoption of Linux containers in the test-suite, replacing fakechroot(1)
    • New Python binding usage examples
    • Translations split off
    • Removal of various deprecated and/or unused APIs
    • Various internal code cleanups

RPM 4.19.0 RC1 released (Sep 04 2023)

  • This is a release candidate with minor enhancements and bug fixes since BETA.
  • See draft release notes for details and download information
  • Highlights include:
    • New rpmspec aliases for weak dependency queries
    • More consistent behavior with %optflags and noarch builds
    • Test-suite fixes and tweaks to the new container-based backend
    • Export our libraries as a CMake find_package() config
    • Default to C.UTF-8 locale in CMake
    • Other CMake fixes and tweaks

CI migrated from SemaphoreCI Classic to GitHub Actions (Aug 03 2023)

  • Due to the planned discontinuation of SemaphoreCI Classic starting in early September 2023, we have moved to GitHub Actions for our CI needs (see #2569 for more details).

RPM 4.19.0 BETA released (Aug 02 2023)

  • This is a feature-complete pre-release with a number of bug fixes since ALPHA2.
  • See draft release notes for details and download information
  • Highlights include:
    • New sysusers.sh script as a drop-in replacement for systemd-sysusers(8)
    • New %{specpartsdir} macro for configuring the spec snippet location
    • New %{rpmversion} macro for obtaining the running RPM version
    • New Python binding usage examples
    • Adoption of Linux containers in the test-suite, replacing fakechroot(1)
    • Platform detection fixes and improvements for x86 CPUs
    • Chroot handling fixes

RPM 4.19.0 ALPHA2 released (Jun 09 2023)

  • This is a bug fix update to address a couple of issues found by the early adopters of ALPHA1, mostly related to some bits and pieces missed during the CMake transition.
  • See draft release notes for details and download information

RPM 4.19.0 ALPHA released (Apr 13 2023)

  • See draft release notes for details and download information
  • Highlights include:
    • New spec snippet support for dynamic spec generation
    • New sysusers.d(5) integration for automated user and group handling
    • Memory and address-space aware build resource allocation
    • Proper shell-like globbing and escaping in %files and CLI
    • New CMake build system
    • Translations split off
    • Removal of various deprecated and/or unused APIs
    • Various internal code cleanups

RPM 4.18.1 released (Mar 13 2023)

  • This is a bug fix release addressing a number of regressions and other issues.
  • See release notes for details and download information
  • Highlights include:
    • Preserve packages bit-by-bit again when adding and then removing signatures
    • Fix install of block and character special files
    • Disable debuginfod server lookups during package builds
    • Plugin fixes (fapolicyd and selinux)
    • Various OpenPGP and macro parser fixes

RPM v6 package format draft published (Jan 30 2023)

RPM 4.18.0 released (Sep 20 2022)

  • See release notes for details and download information
  • Highlights include:
    • Big file handling rework to address a class of symlink vulnerabilities during install, restore and erasure
    • More intuitive conditional builds macro %bcond
    • Weak dependencies accept qualifiers like meta and pre now
    • New Sequoia-based OpenPGP backend
    • New interactive shell for working with macros (rpmspec --shell) and embedded Lua (rpmlua)
    • New %conf spec section for build configuration
    • New rpmuncompress cli tool simplifies unpacking multiple sources
    • Numerous macro improvements and fixes
    • Numerous internal OpenPGP parser correctness and security fixes

POPT 1.19 released (Sep 20 2022)

  • See release notes for full details and download information
  • Highlights since popt 1.18 include
    • Two regressions from 1.18 fixed
    • Code cleanups and fixes
    • License clarification

RPM 4.18.0 rc1 released (Sep 02 2022)

  • See release notes for details and download information
  • Highlights since 4.18.0-beta1 release include
    • Sequoia-based OpenPGP backend added
    • New SourceLicense tag in spec
    • Miscellanous bugfixes across the board

RPM 4.17.1.1 released (Sep 02 2022)

  • This is a bug fix release to address two regressions introduced in 4.17.1.
  • See release notes for details and download information

RPM 4.17.1 released (Jul 01 2022)

  • This is primarily a bug fix release, with select minor enhancements.
  • See release notes for details and download information
  • Highlights include:
    • New %bcond macro for a nicer way to define build conditionals
    • New %{verbose:...} macro for verbose mode expansion
    • Separate warning summary in rpmbuild(8)
    • OpenPGP parser and IMA security fixes (CVE-2021-3521)
    • Buildroot policy fixes
    • Various other important and regression fixes

RPM 4.18.0 beta1 released (Jun 28 2022)

  • See release notes for details and download information
  • Highlights since 4.18.0-alpha2 release include
    • Misc bugs old and new fixed

POPT 1.19 rc1 released (Jun 07 2022)

  • See release notes for full details and download information
  • Highlights since popt 1.18 include
    • Two regressions from 1.18 fixed
    • Code cleanups and fixes
    • License clarification

RPM 4.18.0 alpha2 released! (May 05 2022)

  • See release notes for details and download information
  • Unfortunately alpha1 had a handful of small but annoying regressions introduced late in the cycle, making it quite untestable in large scale. This alpha2 update is just to address those, no new functionality is being added.

RPM 4.18.0 alpha1 released! (Apr 13 2022)

  • See release notes for details and download information
  • Highlights include:
    • Big file handling rework to address a class of symlink vulnerabilities during install, restore and erasure
    • More intuitive conditional builds macro %bcond
    • Weak dependencies accept qualifiers like meta and pre now
    • New interactive shell for working with macros (rpmspec --shell) and embedded Lua (rpmlua)
    • New %conf spec section for build configuration
    • New rpmuncompress cli tool simplifies unpacking multiple sources
    • Numerous macro improvements and fixes
    • Numerous OpenPGP parser correctness and security fixes

GitHub Discussions open (Apr 13 2022)

  • We’re opening up the GitHub Discussions to section as an experiment to improve communications with the community

RPM 4.17.0 released! (Sep 3 2021)

  • See release notes for details and download information
  • Original announcement
  • Highlights include:
    • More robust install failure handling
    • Many macro improvements, in particular wrt Lua integration
    • Some long-needed transaction API improvements
    • New buildroot policy to remove .la files by default
    • New dbus-announce plugin added
    • Many miscellaneous bugs, leaks and regressions fixed
    • Man pages converted to Markdown for easier maintenance + many other doc improvements
    • Beginnings of a reference manual: https://rpm-software-management.github.io/rpm/manual/
    • Debuginfo extraction split to external project: https://sourceware.org/debugedit/
    • Python helpers split to external project: https://github.com/rpm-software-management/python-rpm-packaging
    • Various unmaintained scripts removed

RPM 4.17.0 RC1 released! (Aug 20 2021)

  • See draft release notes for details and download information
  • Original announcement
  • Highlights since alpha include:
    • Fix building from tarball to not require pandoc
    • New dbus-announce plugin added
    • Multiple minor resource leaks fixed

RPM 4.17.0 BETA1 released! (Jun 22 2021)

  • See draft release notes for details and download information
  • Original announcement
  • Highlights since alpha include:
    • Debuginfo extraction split to external project: https://sourceware.org/debugedit/
    • Python helpers split to external project: https://github.com/rpm-software-management/python-rpm-packaging
    • Various unmaintained scripts removed
    • New buildroot policy to remove .la files by default
    • Man pages converted to Markdown for easier maintenance + many other doc improvements
    • Miscellaneous bugs and regressions fixed

IRC-channel move to Libera Chat (Jun 17 2021)

  • The recent developments leave us no choice but to follow the masses to the new Libera Chat IRC network
  • Along with the change we’re moving from #rpm.org to #rpm channel
  • Further details in the original announcement

RPM 4.17.0 ALPHA released! (Apr 26 2021)

  • See draft release notes for details and download information
  • Original announcement
  • Highlights include:
    • More robust install failure handling
    • Many macro improvements, in particular wrt Lua integration
    • Some long-needed transaction API improvements
    • Beginnings of a reference manual

RPM 4.16.1.3 and 4.15.1.1 released! (Mar 22 2021)

  • These are primarily security releases for CVE-2021-3421, CVE-2021-20271 and CVE-2021-20266, with some additional fixes for important bugs.
  • See 4.16.1.3 and 4.15.1.1 release notes for download information and further details.

RPM 4.16.1.2 released! (Dec 16 2020)

  • See release notes for download information
  • This is a brown paperbag release to fix a single regression in 4.16.1 which causes rpmbuild to crash if hostname is not resolvable, and an accidental soname bump introduced in now withdrawn 4.16.1.1.

RPM 4.16.1.1 released … and withdrawn (Dec 16 2020)

  • The release got eaten by a mob of angry 2020 grues.

RPM 4.16.1 released! (Dec 10 2020)

  • See release notes for full details and download information
  • This is a bugfix-only release to address one regression in 4.16.0 and various other bugs, old and new.

RPM 4.16.0 released! (Sep 30 2020)

  • See release notes for full details and download information
  • Announcement email
  • Highlights include:
    • Database backends:
      • NDB backend promoted to stable
      • New sqlite-based backend
      • New experimental read-only BDB backend
      • BDB database backend deprecated
    • Powerful macro and %if expressions including ternary operator and native version comparison
    • Optional MIME type based file classification
    • Dependency generation by parametric macros
    • A new version parsing and comparison API in C and Python
    • Parallelise test-suite execution
    • Clarify RPM license

RPM 4.16.0 RC1 released! (Aug 31 2020)

  • See draft release notes for full details and download information
  • Miscellaneous bugfixes across the board

RPM 4.16.0 BETA3 released! (Jun 24 2020)

  • See draft release notes for full details and download information
  • Fixes (reverts) dependency generator regression in beta2

RPM 4.16.0 BETA2 released! (Jun 23 2020)

  • See draft release notes for full details and download information
  • Highlights since beta1 release include:
    • Several important fixes across the board
    • Parallelise test-suite execution

POPT 1.18 released, upstream rebooted! (Jun 23 2020)

  • See release notes for full details and download information
  • Highlighs since popt 1.16 include
    • Ancient security issue with popt failing to drop privileges on alias exec from a SUID/SGID program
    • Collected accumulated fixes from distros etc
    • Source and build-system cleanup and modernization

POPT 1.18 RC1 released, upstream rebooted! (May 29 2020)

  • See the announcement for the background story, details and download info
  • Highlighs since popt 1.16 include
    • Ancient security issue with popt failing to drop privileges on alias exec from a SUID/SGID program
    • Collected accumulated fixes from distros etc
    • Source and build-system cleanup and modernization

RPM 4.16.0 BETA1 released! (May 29 2020)

  • See draft release notes for full details and download information
  • Highlights since the alpha release include:
    • A new version parsing and comparison API in C and Python
    • Native version comparison support in expressions
    • Assorted bugfixes and minor enhancements

RPM 4.14.3 released! (Apr 28 2020)

  • See release notes for full details and download information
  • Highlights include
    • Backported support for caret version
    • Numerous bugfixes across the board
    • Clarify RPM license

RPM 4.14.3 RC1 released! (Mar 26 2020)

  • See draft release notes for full details and download information
  • Highlights include
    • Backported support for caret version
    • Numerous bugfixes across the board
    • Clarify RPM license

RPM 4.16.0 ALPHA released! (Mar 23 2020)

  • See draft release notes for full details and download information
  • Highlights include:
    • New experimental sqlite and read-only BDB backends, NDB promoted to stable
    • Powerful macro and %if expressions including ternary operator
    • Automatic SSD detection and optimization on Linux
    • Optional MIME type based file classification
    • Dependency generation by parametric macros
    • Clarify RPM license

RPM 4.15.1 released! (Nov 18 2019)

  • See release notes for full details and download information
  • Highlights include:
    • Fixes to several important bugs and regressions
    • New gcrypt crypto backend