RPM 4.11.0.1 Release Notes

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Summary of changes from RPM 4.11.0

Shortly after the release of RPM 4.11.0, a critical last-minute regression in %ghost %config behavior was discovered and the 4.11.0 release was pulled from downloads entirely as the regression could cause severe data loss: 4.11.0 would remove %ghost %config files on package upgrades. As the rpmdb contents (ie /var/lib/rpm/*) are commonly packaged as %config %ghost files, upgrading rpm itself with 4.11.0 would erase the entire database with, well, disastrous results. To protect the innocent, the dangerous 4.11.0 release will not be reintroduced on rpm.org at all.

Be sure to check out the 4.11.0 release notes for the vast majority of changes from 4.10 however.

General bugfixes and enhancements

  • Fix regression introduced in RPM 4.11.0 where %ghost %config files would get removed on package upgrade.
  • Restore legacy behavior of %ghost %config files on erasure: when package is removed, %ghost %config files are left in place as-is - not removed and not backed up like regular %config files. While this behavior could be considered a long-standing bug, the behavior goes back at least a decade and packages might be relying on it to preserve precious data.
  • Always preserve %ghost %config on erasure. Related to above, older rpm versions would remove a %ghost %config file on erasure when the on-disk file was identical to the non-packaged version present in buildroot at build-time.

Build proces

  • Add test-cases for %ghost and %ghost %config behavior.