Versionlock Command

Synopsis

dnf5 versionlock <subcommand> <package-spec>...

Description

The versionlock command in DNF5 takes a set of names and versions for packages and excludes all other versions of those packages. This allows you to protect packages from being updated by newer versions. Alternately, it accepts a specific package version to exclude from updates, e.g. for when it’s necessary to skip a specific release of a package that has known issues.

The plugin will walk each entry of the versionlock file, and exclude any package of given name that doesn’t match conditions listed within the file. This is basically the same as using dnf5 –exclude for the package name itself (as you cannot exclude installed packages), but dnf will still see the versions you have installed/versionlocked as available so that dnf reinstall will still work.

Note the versionlock command does not apply any excludes in non-transactional operations like repoquery, list, info, etc.

Subcommands

add: Add a versionlock for all available packages matching the spec. It means that only versions of packages represented by package-spec are available for transaction operations. The NEVRAs to lock to are first searched among installed packages and then (if none is found) in all currently available packages.
exclude: Add an exclude (within versionlock) for the available packages matching the spec. It means that packages represented by package-spec will be excluded from transaction operations.
clear: Remove all versionlock entries.
delete: Remove any matching versionlock entries.
list: List the current versionlock entries.

Examples

dnf5 versionlock add acpi: If acpi package is installed, lock it to currently installed version. If it’s not installed, lock acpi to any of currently available versions.
dnf5 versionlock list: Show current versionlock configuration.
dnf5 versionlock delete acpi: Remove any rules for acpi package.
dnf5 versionlock exclude iftop-1.2.3-7.fc38: Exclude iftop-1.2.3-7.fc38 release.

Versionlock file format

The versionlock file is a TOML file stored in location /etc/dnf/versionlock.toml. The file must contain the version key, currently supported version is 1.0. Then it contains packages - a list of locking entries. Each entry consist of the package name and a list of conditions. All the conditions must be true for a package to match (they are combined using logical AND). All entries are then combined together using logical OR operation.

Example of versionlock file

version = "1.0"

# keep package bash on version 0:5.2.15-5.fc39
[[packages]]
name = "bash"               # name of the package
comment = "description"     # optional description of the entry
[[packages.conditions]]     # conditions for the package "bash"
key = "evr"                 # epoch, version, evr, and arch keys are supported
comparator = "="            # <, <=, =, >=, >, and != operators are supported
value = "0:5.2.15-5.fc39"   # pattern to match

# exclude iftop-1.2.3-7.fc38 version (versionlock exclude iftop-1.2.3-7.fc38)
[[packages]]
name = "iftop"
[[packages.conditions]]
key = "evr"
comparator = "!="
value = "0:1.0-0.31.pre4.fc39"

# keep acpi on major version 3
[[packages]]
name = "acpi"
[[packages.conditions]]
key = "evr"
comparator = "<"
value = "4"
[[packages.conditions]]
key = "evr"
comparator = ">="
value = "3"