DNF5 is a command-line package manager that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs in a consistent manner. It supports RPM packages, modulemd modules, and comps groups & environments.

As part of the DNF5 stack, libdnf is the package management library. It was originally written to support the DNF package manager and grew up into a versatile library. Now you can use it for building custom tools that load repositories, query packages, resolve dependencies and install packages.

It is powered with libsolv, wrapping it with an easy to use programming interface.

• DNF5 supports working with the following artifacts:

  • RPM repositories (repomd)
  • RPM packages
  • Comps groups
  • Comps environments
  • Advisories (updateinfo, errata)
  • Modules (modulemd)

DNF5 is written in C++ and it can interface with several programming languages:

• C++ - fully supported
• Python 3 - fully supported
• Perl 5 - best effort
• Ruby - best effort
• Go - doesn't work, looking for contributors
• C - not implemented, doesn't seem to be a priority for any of our existing API users

⚠️ The current (main) branch is subject of a major rewrite. The API/ABI is currently unstable ⚠️

• For HTML documentation see https://dnf5.readthedocs.io/
• The header files are documented because documentation is mainly generated from them

• GitHub issues [backlog]
• Red Hat Bugzilla [backlog]

• By contributing to this project you agree to the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO). This document is a simple statement that you, as a contributor, have the legal right to submit the contribution. See the DCO file for details.
• All contributions to this project are licensed under LGPLv2.1+ or GPLv2+. See the License section for details.

• Please follow the contributing guidelines
• When a patch is ready, submit a pull request
• It is a good practice to write documentation and unit tests as part of the patches

To install build requirements, run::

$ dnf builddep dnf5.spec [--define '_without_<option> 1 ...]

To build code, run::

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake .. [-DWITH_<OPTION>=<ON|OFF> ...]
$ make -j4

To build rpms from git, run::

$ export PREFIX=$(rpmspec dnf5.spec -q --srpm --qf '%{name}-%{version}'); git archive --format=tar.gz --prefix=$PREFIX/ HEAD > $PREFIX.tar.gz
$ rpmbuild -ba --define "_sourcedir $(pwd)" dnf5.spec [--with=<option>|--without=<option> ...]

To run the tests, follow the steps to build the code and then run::

# from the 'build' directory
$ CTEST_OUTPUT_ON_FAILURE=1 make test

As an alternative, tests can be executed in a verbose mode::

# from the 'build' directory
$ make test ARGS='-V'

TBD

• The libraries is licensed under LGPLv2.1+
• The standalone programs that are part of this project are licensed under GPLv2+
• See COPYING for more details