RPM-4.12
Summary
Update RPM to the upcoming 4.12 release.
Owner
- Name: Florian Festi, Panu Matilainen
- Email: rpm-maint@rpm.org
- Release notes owner:
Current status
- Targeted release: Fedora 21
- Last updated: 2014/04/01
- Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
Detailed Description
The current upstream repository contains several improvements that need to get released and integrated into Fedora:
- Support for weak dependencies
- Support for files > 4GB
- New API for accessing files and file contents
- New tool for converting rpm packages to tar files
- Internal plugin interface
- Improved SELinux handling
Benefit to Fedora
The above plus closing the gap between RPM upstream and the Fedora version.
Scope
- Proposal owners: The RPM code base needs to get stabilized and release ready. The release candidates need to be tested in rawhide.
- Other developers: Will test the release candidates during normal operation in raw hide. Need to report issues and bugs.
- Release engineering: Check infrastructure for compatibility. Check for 64bit readiness
- Policies and guidelines: Packaging policies might need reconsidering in the light of the new options.
Upgrade/compatibility impact
Using some of the new feature may break forward compatibility. Backward compatibility is expected to be kept.
How To Test
Testing is done in full operation.
User Experience
- Packagers will be able to package files >4GB
- Packagers will be able to use weak dependencies
- API users will be able to access file data more cleanly and access payload data for the first time
- XXX SELinux
Dependencies
- Weak dependencies need to be supported by create_repo, and the updaters (and may be the packaging policy) to be useful
- >4GB support requires the infrastructure to support those file sizes to be usable
Those features not being useful from the start is not a blocker for the change, though.
Contingency Plan
Go back to rpm-4.11. This may require reverting some changes to other packages (in case they are already using some of the new features). But it is not expected to happen on a large scale - if at all.
Documentation
Add link to upstream release notes here.