Changes/PackageKit-DNF5

PackageKit-DNF5

Summary

Switch PackageKit to the new DNF5 backend built on libdnf5.

Owner

• Name: Neal Gompa
• Email: ngompa13@gmail.com

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 44
• Last updated: 2026-02-03
• Announced
• Discussion thread
• FESCo issue: #3542
• Tracker bug: #2436482
• Release notes tracker: #297

Detailed Description

As part of the ongoing work to replace the legacy DNF implementation with DNF version 5 (with builds in Fedora Linux 40 and system tooling in Fedora Linux 41), this Change will switch PackageKit over to the new DNF5 backend built on the libdnf5 library.

Benefit to Fedora

This unifies all user-facing package management interfaces with the DNF5 package management stack, which means that DNF5 features are now available regardless of how software management is done (such as via CLI, Cockpit, or software centers like Plasma Discover or GNOME Software).

Users should see a more reliable experience with PackageKit-based frontends, including more consistent behavior for system upgrades and better exposure of update information through the PackageKit API.

Scope

• Proposal owners: Merge the pull request for PackageKit to switch DNF backend implementations

• Other developers: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Release engineering: #13147

• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Alignment with the Fedora Strategy: N/A

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Users will be automatically migrated from the DNF4 backend to the DNF5 backend upon upgrade. There will be no manual configuration required to adapt to this change.

How To Test

Users should be able to test in Fedora 43 and Rawhide now easily by doing the following:

1. Install the PackageKit-backend-dnf5 package
2. Restart packagekit.service
3. Use various PackageKit frontends (pkgctl, Cockpit, Plasma Discover, GNOME Software)

After this Change is implemented, merely being on Rawhide would be sufficient to test with normal operations with PackageKit frontends.

User Experience

There should not be any user-visible changes beyond some minor differences in dependency resolution. Users are not expected to significantly notice any differences.

Dependencies

N/A.

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: Revert to F43 configuration, where DNF4 is the default and defer to the next release.
• Contingency deadline: Beta Freeze
• Blocks release? Yes.

Documentation

The standard DNF5 documentation applies here, as PackageKit merely consumes package manager configuration through libdnf5.

Release Notes

PackageKit has been updated to use DNF version 5 for software management. This offers a more uniform and reliable software management experience across the various software management frontends (such as Cockpit, Plasma Discover, and GNOME Software).