Changes in DNF5 in comparison to DNF

The chapter describe differences between DNF5 (https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf5) and DNF (https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf)

Changes on the API:

PackageSet::operator[]

It was removed due to insufficient O(n^2) performance. Use PackageSet iterator to access the data instead.

Package::get_epoch()

The return type was changed from unsigned long to std::string.

DNF: Package.size, libdnf: dnf_package_get_size()

The return value was ambiguous, returning either package or install size. Use Package::get_download_size() and Package::get_install_size() instead.

dnf_sack_set_installonly, dnf_sack_get_installonly, dnf_sack_set_installonly_limit, dnf_sack_get_installonly_limit

The functions were dropped as unneeded. The installonly packages are taken directly from main Conf in Base.

Query::filter() - HY_PKG_UPGRADES_BY_PRIORITY, HY_PKG_OBSOLETES_BY_PRIORITY, HY_PKG_LATEST_PER_ARCH_BY_PRIORITY

The priority filter was separated into a standalone method. Combine query.filter_priority() with query.filter_latest_evr() or another filter to achieve the original functionality.

Query::filter() - HY_PKG_LATEST

The filter was replaced with filter_latest_evr() which has the same behavior as HY_PKG_LATEST_PER_ARCH

ConfigMain::proxy_auth_method() and ConfigRepo::proxy_auth_method()

The return types were changed. OptionEnum<std::string> was replaced by OptionStringSet. A combination of several authentication methods (for example “basic” and “digest”) can now be used. This allows using a list of authentication methods in configuration files and the DNF5 command line “–setopt=proxy_auth_method=”.

Changes on the command line:

Commands cannot have optional subcommands and optional arguments. Is some cases subcommand can have the same string as an argument. It means there is a difficulty to find advisory for package with the name list, info, or summary. dnf history info <transaction ID> -> dnf history –info <transaction ID> dnf updateinfo info -> dnf updateinfo –info

Options that cannot be applied to all command or can be applied but without any effect should be removed from general options and implemented only for related commands –best, –nobest are only related several transaction commands

Renaming boolean options to format –<option>, and –no-<option> –nobest -> –no-best. Proposing to keep –nobest as a deprecated option.

To disable all configuration file excludes, the * glob character is used now instead of the all within the disable_excludes configuration option to unify the behavior with query objects on the API.

strict configuration option deprecation

strict config option is now deprecated. The problem with this option is that it does two things:

if disabled it allows the solver to skip uninstallable packages to resolve depsolv problems

if disabled it allows dnf to skip unavailable packages (this is for install command mostly)

The functionality is now split to two config options - skip_broken for the uninstallable packages and skip_unavailable for packages not present in repositories. Together with these new config options there are also corresponding command line options –skip-broken and –skip-unavailable for commands where it makes sense.

Autoremove command

Dropped <spec> positional argument since the usecase is sufficiently covered by the remove command.

Specific autoremove-n, autoremove-na, and autoremove-nevra variants of the command are not supported.

Distro-sync command

When any argument does not match any package or it is not installed, DNF5 fail. The behavior can be modified by the –skip-unavailable option.

Dropped distrosync and distribution-synchronization aliases

Downgrade command

When any argument does not match any package or it is not installed, DNF5 fail. The behavior can be modified by the –skip-unavailable option.

Group command

Dropped group mark install and group mark remove subcommands in favour of the new –no-packages option of the group install/remove commands. So for example to mark a group as installed without touching any packages, dnf5 group install –no-packages <group_id> command can be used.

Dropped groupinstall alias. It is replaced by dnf group install

Dropped groupinfo alias. It is replaced by dnf group info

Dropped grouplist alias. It is replaced by dnf group list

Dropped grouperase alias. It is replaced by dnf group remove

Dropped groupremove alias. It is replaced by dnf group remove

Dropped groupupdate alias. It is replaced by dnf group upgrade

Dropped groups alias. It is replaced by dnf group

Help command

Dropped. The functionality is replaced by –help option

Info command

Dropped if alias.

List command

Dropped –all option since this behavior is now the default one.

Changed the list of –available packages. Previously, dnf4 only listed packages that are either not installed, or whose version is higher than the installed version. Now this behaviour is kept when no modifier is used - to skip packages already listed in the Installed Packages section to reduce duplicities. But if the –available modifier is used, dnf5 considers all versions available in the enabled repositories, regardless of which version is installed.

Repoclosure command

Dropped –pkg` option. Positional arguments can be used to specify packages to check closure for.

Repolist command

Option -v and –verbose were removed. The functionality is replaced by repoinfo command that was already introduced in DNF4.

Repoquery command

Dropped: -a/–all, –alldeps, –nevra options, their behavior is and has been the default for both dnf4 and dnf5. The options are no longer needed.

Dropped: –nvr, –envra options. They are no longer supported.

Dropped: –archlist alias for –arch.

Dropped: -f alias for –file also the arguments to –file are separated by comma instead of a space.

Moved –groupmember option to the Group info and list commands and renamed to –contains-pkgs.

–queryformat/–qf no longer prints additional new line at the end of each formatted string, bringing it closer to rpm –query behavior.

–queryformat no longer supports size tag because it was printing install size for installed packages and download size for not-installed packages. This could be confusing.

Option –source was renamed to –sourcerpm and it now matches queryformat’s sourcerpm tag.

Upgrade command

New dnf5 option –minimal (upgrade-minimal command still exists as a compatibility alias for upgrade –minimal).

When any argument does not match any package or it is not installed, DNF5 fail. The behavior can be modified by the –skip-unavailable option.

Dropped upgrade command aliases upgrade-to and localupdate.

Changes of configuration:

Default of best configuration option changed to true

The new default value ensures that important updates will not be skipped and issues in distribution will be reported earlier.