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Revision as of 17:11, 1 April 2014 by Ffesti (talk | contribs) (→‎Scope: Notes on timing)

RPM-4.12

Summary

Update RPM to the upcoming 4.12 release.

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 (May be postponed to F22).
  • Policies and guidelines: Packaging policies might need reconsidering in the light of the new options (May be postponed to F22).

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. Especially it requires the builders to be updated to rpm-4.12, too

Those features not being useful from the start is not a blocker for the change, though. Actual use of those features can (and is expected to) be postponed to upcoming Fedora releases.

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.

Release Notes

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