RPM 4.11.0 Release Notes

Download information

  • ’'’The original 4.11.0 release contained such a dangerous regression that it has been pulled out of distribution permanently. Use RPM 4.11.0.1 instead.’’’

Summary of changes from RPM 4.10.x

General bugfixes and enhancements

  • Fix missing error on –import attempt on a non-key file (RhBug:869667)
  • Fix missing error code on unparseable signature in packages, regression introduced in rpm 4.10.0
  • Fix –setperms regression introduced in rpm 4.10.0 (RhBug:881835)
  • Fix several cases of redundant backups on %config files/symlinks (RhBug:597689, RhBug:662706, …)
  • Fix several cases of missing backup when %config file/symlink is replaced by a file of different type or a directory (RhBug:445202)
  • Fix redundant %config backups when on-disk file/symlink content is the same as in replacing (ie new) package, even when digest algorithm changes (RhBug:597689 and others)
  • Fix several cases of missing backups on %config symlinks
  • Fix backup of shared %config files causing overwriting the backed up content with new package contents (ie destroying the backed up data)
  • Fix locale dependent behavior in rpm2cpio.sh (RhBug:878363)
  • Fix disk-space accounting wrt intermediate space requirement during transaction (ticket #175, RhBug:872314)

  • Fix disk-space accounting wrt inodes

  • New –undefine cli switch for undefining macros (related to RhBug:876308)
  • New –licensefiles cli switch for querying license files

  • Add $RPM_CONFIGDIR/macros.d/ directory to default macro path (RhBug:846679)

  • Only create the first instance of a file shared between multiple packages: faster installs, improved timestamp verification behavior, and avoids pathologies when disk-space is low
  • Detect and report attempts to replace directories with a non-directory as file conflicts (related: RhBug:447156)
  • Detect and report attempts to replace directory symlink with a directory as file conflicts

  • Detect and report some cases of conflicting files accessed through different symlinks

  • Updated translations and documentation (RhBug:839126, RhBug:742362…)

Package building

  • New –noclean and –nocheck cli-switches to skip %clean and %check stages of build
  • New %autosetup (and %autopatch) macros for fully automating unpackaging of sources and application of patches, either with plain ‘patch’ or a number of DVCS systems (git, hg, bzr, quilt…) (ticket #54)

  • New built-in %dirname macro

  • Fix rpmspec –parse to not require sources and patches to be present
  • Dont silence patch by default (RhBug:678000, RhBug:773503)
  • Permit non-existent %ghost directories to be packaged (RhBug:839656)
  • Report the actual reason on archive creation failure again
  • Avoid unnecessary error on rpmbuild –addsign when no packages were created
  • Track payload file size limit for src.rpm’s too (RhBug:833427)
  • Warn on apparent content-type mismatches in packages (eg 32bit binaries included in a package for 64bit architecture)

  • Debug information sub-packages renamed to -debuginfo to match common distro practises

  • Fix bogus “unclosed %if” error when %include is used in spec conditionals
  • Fix %license as a %files list virtual attribute
  • New “special” %license with non-absolute path (similar to %doc) to allow easily separating licenses from normal documentation (ticket #116)
  • Make double-quoting work for special %doc and %license for consistency with rest of %files section (ticket #858)
  • Accept “owner” as an alias to “user” %verify attribute (RhBug:838657)
  • Warn about invalid %changelog dates (eg wrong day name) (RhBug:843525)
  • PrePreq tag no longer accepts extra qualifiers (such as “post”)
  • Requires tag no longer accepts “prereq” as an extra qualifier
  • Detect missing argument to %include
  • Report file name and spec line number on %include errors
  • Report starting line for unclosed %if constructs
  • Report the actual unknown option instead of ? in parametrized macros
  • Line continuations can now be arbitrarily long
  • New ELF dependency generator option –no-fake-soname to prevent emitting soname provide when DSO does not set one

API changes

New interfaces

  • New rpmstrPool object + associated functions for efficient string storage & lookup:
    • Pool lifetime: rpmstrPoolCreate(), rpmstrPoolFree() and rpmstrPoolLink()
    • String insertion: rpmstrPoolId(), rpmstrPoolIdn()
    • Accessors: rpmstrPoolStr(), rpmstrPoolStrlen(), rpmstrPoolStreq(), rpmstrPoolNumStr()
    • Disable/enable insertion: rpmstrPoolFreeze(), rpmstrPoolUnfreeze()
  • New rpmIsGlob() function to fix glob_pattern_p() portability issues
  • New rpmtdToPool() function for optimized header string array to string pool insertion
  • New rpmGetArchColor() function for retrieving the canonical “color” of an architecture

Other interface changes

  • Database iterators on the RPMDBI_LABEL pseudo-index are now realiable wrt match count and architecture matching

Internal improvements and cleanups

  • Fix legacy retrofits getting performed on new packages with no files
  • Fix incomplete data killing rpmdsMerge() with assert()
  • Fix partial reads and errors in package IO (RhBug:802839, RhBug:580974)
  • Fix a thinko in file triplet validation that allowed some invalid cases to pass
  • Fix dependency lookups modifying transaction element dependency set iterators
  • Fix librpmio exporting a clashing glob() implementation (RhBug:819680)
  • Fix NSS-usage clash by using private context when possible (RhBug:871485)
  • Fix NSS crypto using deprecated functions and symbols

  • Fix Fread() and Fwrite() behavior on EINTR (RhBug:580974)

  • Optimize adding packages to transaction
  • Optimize transaction dependency checking
  • Optimize dependency set manipulation and comparison
  • Optimize to fingerprinting and file disposition calculations
  • Optimize to rpm cli erasure (-e) target package lookups
  • Optimize internal dependency generator data structures

  • Optimize overall memory consumption and performance by utilizing string pool and id-based operations where most beneficial and possible

  • File state machine divided and conquered for relative sanity
  • Preliminary work towards abstract package payload API
  • Unify ad-hoc string caches to utilize string pools instead
  • Avoid revalidation attempts on known bad headers from rpmdb
  • Issue warnings on unexpectedly failed file/directory removal
  • Clean up fingerprinting code and data structures
  • Clean up spec parsing, especially wrt %files list

Build process

  • Fix spurious compile warnings on architectures where -fstack-protector is not supported
  • Fix compile warnings on gcc >= 4.7
  • Fix compile warnings ẃith NSS >= 3.14
  • Use secure_getenv() instead of private __secure_getenv() when available
  • Fix sepolicy plugin getting built when SELinux support is disabled
  • Fix support for platforms where fdatasync() is not available
  • Dozens of new cases added to the selftest-suite, including systematic testing for %config behavior and file replacement
  • Added support for Lua 5.2
  • Added support for using beecrypt as an alternative crypto implementation (–with-beecrypt)
  • For NSS crypto implementation, NSS version >= 3.12 is now required

Compatibility notes

  • This release is API- and ABI-compatible with rpm 4.10.x (soname does not change)
  • However, two previously public enum values have been removed from rpmfi.h header which can cause compile failures for eg language bindings if they try to further export these symbols:
    • RPMFILE_EXCLUDE which has only ever been useful to librpmbuild
    • RPMFILE_UNPATCHED which is a long-since obsolete and unused placeholder value
  • No new package-level incompatibilities introduced
  • Spec file incompatibilities:
    • Many previously silently accepted spec files will now emit warnings on bogus %changelog dates: day name not matching date is very common in specs as this has not been previously validated.
    • Some previously accepted spec files can now fail to parse due to stricter validation
    • Spec files utilizing the new %license behavior are not compatible with older rpm versions
    • Older rpm versions do not understand double-quoting of special %doc entries. Globs can be used as a backwards-compatible workaround for escaping special characters in file names.