RPM 4.10.0 Release Notes

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Summary of changes from RPM 4.9.x

General bugfixes and enhancements

  • Support dpkg-style sorting of tilde (~) in version/release (ticket #56, RhBug:734802, …)
  • Automatically reload SELinux labels if policy changes while in transaction (RhBug:746073)
  • Various error messages now include file name (or other information) on the failing file where previously unavailable

  • Erasure progress reporting added, -h/–hash and –percent are accepted on rpm -e too
  • Install/erasure progress now shows package version (NEVR) information in -h/–hash mode
  • Install/erasure progress now shows package architecture as well (NEVRA) in non-hash mode

  • Database rebuild (ie –rebuilddb) on a paniced environment no longer requires manual environment removal (RhBug:590710) and no longer attempts to access any indexes of the potentially broken database being rebuilt.

Transactions

  • Allow obsoletes across colors (RhBug:713323)
  • Treat obsoletes as conflicts when obsoleted packages aren’t being removed (RhBug:804069)
  • Fix pretrans dependency calculation when provider is upgraded
  • Non-installed files are not considered provided in dependency calculations.
  • –nodocs and –noconfigs side-effects are now considered in dependency calculations - files which will not be installed are not provided.
  • %pretrans scriptlet failure now fails the install of the package (similarly to %pre and %preun semantics)

  • Detect file conflicts within package itself (RhBug:808750)
  • Detect file conflicts on device nodes
  • Detect file conflicts when permissions (user, group, mode) differ

Queries

  • Recognize epoch as part of a label on queries etc (ticket #117)
  • Fix false match on trailing dash on queries etc (RhBug:488567)
  • Include package architecture in –last output (RhBug:768516)
  • Fix trailing whitespace on versionless dependencies in –requires, –provides, –obsoletes and –conflicts outputs (RhBug:717534, RhBug:735801)
  • Stricter validation of query format strings that would’ve previously caused crashes
  • Query string field formatting is now applied to all output, eg “error” messages like “(none)” which were previously unformatted
  • Show %verifyscript in –scripts query too
  • Show all interpreter arguments in –scripts query (ticket #847)
  • Reflect –pipe command failures in exit code (RhBug:735481)

Keys and signatures

  • Log an error on attempt to sign V3 packages (RhBug:517818 & others)
  • Log an error when trying to sign packages with unsupported key/signature parameters (RhBug:748116, RhBug:719154)
  • Fix misleading error message when gpg key is expired (RhBug:672727)
  • gpg-pubkey headers now carry key id as “packager” tag and their “buildtime” tag now reflects key creation time instead of import time
  • gpg-pubkey headers are now verifiable by sha1 digest that is constant for a given key everywhere
  • rpmkeys utility now accepts –test switch with –import

Miscellanous fixes

  • Switch back to pre-4.9.x BDB cache size (RhBug:752897)
  • Fall back to private BDB environment on (file)systems not supporting shared environment
  • Fix memory corruption on rpmdb size estimation (RhBug:766260)
  • Fix macro expansion buffer overflow regression introduced in 4.9.x (RhBug:431009 reprise)
  • Fix verify output regression introduced in 4.9.x (RhBug:797964)
  • Fix rpm2cpio returning an error on successful extraction of a large (> 2GB) payload (RhBug:790396)
  • rpm2cpio.sh script now understands XZ compressed payloads (RhBug:674348)
  • Add support for ppc64p7 architecture

  • Documentation and translation updates (RhBug::746525, RhBug:809402, RhBug:804049, …)

Package building

  • Add support for 7zip compressed sources
  • Fix package generation in presence of high inode numbers (RhBug:714678)
  • Order hardlinks in a deltarpm friendlier way
  • %configure macro now defaults to –disable-dependency-tracking (ticket #52)
  • Support new GNOME/xdg help location in %find_lang (RhBug:736523, others)
  • Fix various scripts to permit whitespace in $RPM_BUILD_ROOT path

Spec processing

  • Stricter parsing of %if, %if(n)arch and %if(n)os spec conditionals
  • Do not process %include in false branch of spec conditionals (RhBug:782970)
  • Warn but don’t fail the build on missing excluded files (RhBug:745629)
  • Sanity check trigger scriptlet arguments

Automatic dependency generation

  • Extract perl dependecies from “use parent qw(Foo)”
  • Quoting fixes to OCaml dependency extractor scripts
  • Automatic download of sources and patches if they dont exist locally. This feature is disabled by default however as there is currently no means to verify (the digest of) the downloaded content.
  • Add support for automatic namespacing of dependency generator output, settable by %__attr_namespace macro in file attribute config and/or specs, eg “%__elf_namespace foo” to wrap all elf dependency output with “foo(…)” Note that current dependency generators typically hardcode their own namespace, generators need to be modified to fully support this.
  • Updated file attribute rules for working with file >= 5.10 too
  • Fix classification of ELF binaries with setuid/setgid bits
  • Recognize “font collection” as fonts in file classification
  • Fix brace matching on multiline constructs on perl dependency generation (RhBug:752119)

Debug-info generation

  • Recognize .debug_macro in debuginfo generation (RhBug:759272)
  • Generate debug symlinks for all filenames sharing a build-id (RhBug:641377)
  • Warn but don’t fail the build when STABS debuginfo encountered (RhBug:725378, others)

Removed features

  • Support for long since deprecated OpenPGP V3 public keys has been removed. V3 signatures are still supported however.
  • Removed detection for various prehistoric systems
  • Support for “fpio” (aka libc FILE) streams has been removed from the rpm IO subsystem.
  • Unused and unmaintained java dependency generator has been removed

API changes

New interfaces

  • New improved interfaces headerImport() and headerExport() deprecating headerLoad() and headerUnload()
  • Base64 manipulation API: rpmBase64Encode(), rpmBase64Decode() and rpmBase64CRC()
  • rpmKeyringVerifySig() keyring method for simpler signature verification
  • New interfaces for OpenPGP packet manipulation: pgpPrtParams(), pgpDigParamsCmp(), pgpDigParamsAlgo(), pgpDigGetParams(), pgpDigParamsFree()
  • New low-level pgpVerifySignature() signature verification function
  • Rpm IO file descriptors now remember the path they were opened with (when applicaple). This is retrievable with a new Fdescr() function.
  • New rpmdsMatchesDep() function, allowing use of index from rpmdb queries
  • Export rpm’s string hashing function in librpmio as rstrhash()
  • New rpmtdFlags() function for retrieving flags of a tag data container

Removed / internalized interfaces

  • rpmShowProgress() internal state variables are no longer exported
  • pgpLen() function has been removed (buggy and unsafe)
  • headerCheckPayloadFormat(), headerMergeLegacySigs() and headerRegenSigHeader() functions have been removed / made internal.
  • fdNew() function has been removed from the API, file descritors can only be created by Fopen() and friends
  • fdGetFILE() function has been removed (FILE streams are no longer supported)
  • timedRead() function has been removed
  • rpmsqFork() and rpmsqWait() functions have been removed
  • rpmSetTables() function has been made internal

Other interface changes

  • Transaction progress callback enhancements:
    • RPMCALLBACK_UNINST_PROGRESS now reflects real erasure progress
    • New RPMCALLBACK_INST_STOP callback event issued when package install stops
    • New RPMCALLBACK_SCRIPT_START and RPMCALLBACK_SCRIPT_STOP callback events issued on package scriptlet start and stop (RhBug:606239).
  • pgpExtractPubkeyFingerprint() and rpmPubkeyNew() now properly handle and propagate errors from pgpPubkeyFingerprint() failure.
  • Implicit self-provides and RPMTAG_OPTFLAGS are now added during rpmSpecParse() already
  • Change type of scriptlet argument tags (RPMTAG_PREINPROG etc) to string arrays which they always have been
  • New RPMTAG_FILENLINKS tag extension for retrieving file link counts
  • New tag extensions for pretty-formatting dependency data: RPMTAG_REQUIRENEVRS, RPMTAG_PROVIDENEVRS, RPMTAG_OBSOLETENEVRS and RPMTAG_CONFLICTNEVRS
  • New RPMTAG_INSTFILENAMES tag extension for retrieving state aware file lists (ie non-installed files are not listed)
  • New RPMTAG_FILENLINKS tag extension for retrieving file link counts
  • New RPMDBI_INSTFILENAMES pseudo-index for retrieving only installed files
  • Fread() and Fwrite() on NULL descriptor now return an error
  • Support Ftell() on zlib compressed streams
  • Fix crashes and other issues on non-fpio Fflush()
  • fdFree() now always return NULL like other “destructor” functions in rpm
  • rpmdsRpmlib() returns error code on failure
  • rpmtsImportPubkey() now honors RPMTRANS_FLAG_TEST flag if set
  • Arbitrary limitation on rpmtsSetKeyring() removed, keyring change is now permitted at all times
  • Transaction set keyring is never automatically loaded when signature checking is disabled via rpmtsSetVSFlags()
  • rpmfiNew() can now fail and return NULL on headers with inconsistent file list data.
  • rpmtsAddInstallElement() and rpmtsAddEraseElement() can now fail on headers with inconsistent or missing data
  • rpmtsRun() now fully recalculates file dispositions even if a test-run was done on the same transaction set earlier. This allows symlink <-> directory replacement tricks in %pretrans to work again on clients like yum which first perform a test-transaction.
  • headerGet() now sets RPMTD_INVALID flag on tag data containers when retrieval fails due to inconsistent data (primarily extensions)
  • ufdCopy() now returns off_t to permit correct return code on large files

Internal improvements and cleanups

  • Much stronger header validity and consistency checks
  • Much stronger OpenPGP packet validity and consistency checks
  • File state machine and its interfaces cleaned up and simplified
  • Use temporary suffix on install even if clock is wrong
  • Optimizations for string length calculations on header import
  • Optimizations for header loading from rpmdb
  • Optimizations and cleanups to public key and signature manipulation
  • Optimizations, corrections and cleanups to OpenPGP packet manipulation
  • Optimizations for header data retrieval in python bindings
  • Abstract crypto interface to allow support for alternative cryptography libraries (besides NSS).
  • Do not rely on mkstemp() implementation to set restrictive umask
  • Fix potential crash on Fclose() errors on XZ/LZMA streams
  • Add internal interfaces for scriptlet manipulation, make rpmScript opaque
  • Remember dependency set color through rpmdsCurrent()
  • Fix file state on colored file replacements
  • File descriptor IO cleanups
  • Database manipulation cleanups: improved internal APIs, replace assert() deaths with proper error handling etc
  • Sanitize internal package lead section API
  • Simplify dependency generator execution
  • Mass-elimination of unused and dead variable manipulations (assignments, increments…) and related cleanups throughout the codebase
  • Validate semantic correctness of various inter-related tags (such as filename triplets)
  • Numerous previously ignored error conditions are now properly handled
  • On Linux, make AT_PLATFORM and AT_HWCAP available to internal hardware detection code
  • Remove piles of ancient bit-rotten platform-specific macros
  • Remove unused SELinux file context path macros
  • Remove libio usage to provide consistent sematics for Fread() and Fwrite()

Python bindings

  • Add RPMSENSE_PRETRANS and RPMSENSE_POSTTRANS constants
  • Add module-level rpm.reloadConfig() function for resetting and/or reloading global rpm configuration
  • Add clear() method to transaction set objects (to remove all transaction members)
  • Add name property to rpm.fd objects, similar to Python file objects
  • Add reduce() method to header objects to support pickling and copying
  • Fix transaction element Parent() method to return correct type
  • Fix crash in rpm.fd object conversion on error
  • Fix crash on list construction error in low-memory conditions
  • Fix memory leaks on rpm.fd object conversion and in the deprecated hdr.fiFromHeader(), hdr.dsFromHeader() and hdr.dsOfHeader() methods
  • Fix METH_NOARGS callback signatures (internal)
  • Fix SystemError on inserting an empty list insert to header
  • Replace uses of deprecated PyCObject with PyCapsule (RhBug:623864)
  • Retrieving header data can now raise rpm.error exception on invalid data

Build process

  • Remove distro/vendor autodetection from configure. $build_vendor is used for “canonical vendor” unless overridden by –with-vendor=. NOTE: this affects macro configuration + rpmrc search paths and %{_vendor} macro default value.
  • Create and install platform configuration for all known architectures, on all OS’es
  • Do not attempt running the test-suite without fakechroot (ticket #851)
  • Do not require support for XZ compression in the test-suite
  • Fix build with newer Berkeley DB versions when not using –with-external-db
  • Support for ancient bzip2 library versions removed
  • zlib is now considered a mandatory library
  • Several new test-suite cases
  • Except for compilation, test-suite now runs fully inside fakechroot
  • Remove unused checks from configure
  • Build can be silenced on automake versions which support it
  • Python bindings can now be alternatively built with Python distutils, making it simpler to build the bindings for different Python versions, notably 2.x vs 3.x (RhBug:531543)

Compatibility notes

  • Packages utilizing the new tilde version handling cannot be correctly upgraded by older versions of RPM. The use of this feature is tracked with new rpmlib(TildeInVersions) dependency.
  • Programs parsing –percent mode output are likely to require adjustments due to the added erasure progress and package info format change: package NEVRA is now used instead of NVR.
  • The way hardlinks in packages was changed to flatten the inode numbers to single virtual int32_t space instead of using physical device and inode pairs from buildroot files. This makes inode and device numbers predictable and reproducable across builds and avoids issues with very large inode/device numbers on 64bit filesystems. The change is supposed to be fully backwards compatible with former rpm (and cpio) versions as the numerical semantics are preserved, this compatibility note is “just for the record.”