Features/RPM4.10

= Update RPM to 4.10 =

Summary
Update RPM to 4.10 in Fedora 18.

Owner

 * Name: PanuMatilainen
 * Email: pmatilai@redhat.com

Current status

 * Targeted release:  Fedora 18
 * Last updated: 2012-12-02
 * Percentage of completion: 0%

Detailed Description
The RPM development team would like to update Fedora RPM to a pre-release version of 4.10 as early as possible to leverage the wider testing that Fedora rawhide gets. A stable upstream version of the new RPM is expected to be released well in time before Fedora 18 alpha. This is more of a "time-based code outlet" release than one with many new fancy features.

Benefit to Fedora
The full change summary (draft) can be found at http://rpm.org/wiki/Releases/4.10.0, but some of the immediate benefits to Fedora are
 * Performance improvements
 * Automatic SELinux policy reload on policy changes
 * Improved robustness: more thorough input validation, added error checking and handling etc.
 * Many bugfixes all over the place

Scope
Packages directly linking to librpm need to be rebuilt due to soname change, but no other rebuilds are necessary as no new package-level incompatibilities have been introduced.

From upstream POV there are no big hurdles expected in reaching 4.10 stable from current situation: some loose ends to tie up and basic shakedown after a fairly large amount of internal changes.

How To Test
Rpm has it's own test-suite which gets executed during the package build. Beyond that, rpm gets quite thoroughly tested in the course of "everyday activities" such as system installation, upgrades and package building.

User Experience

 * The new RPM changes very little in the average "user experience":
 * Somewhat faster operation
 * Some annoying bugs have been fixed

Dependencies

 * Dependencies are unchanged from rpm-4.9.x.

Contingency Plan

 * Revert to rpm 4.9.x. As there are no database- or other package-level incompatibilities introduced in this version, reverting would be a simple matter of bumping epoch and rebuilding the packages linking to librpm.

Documentation
Release note draft document can be found in http://rpm.org/wiki/Releases/4.10.0

Release Notes
No need for a release notes entry.

Comments and Discussion

 * See Talk:Features/RPM4.10