RPM 4.19.0 Release Notes

September 19, 2023

Allow piping from rpm2archive(8) (#2208)
Add rpmsort(8) utility for sorting RPM versions
Add --nopreuntrans and --nopostuntrans scriptlet disablers (#2119)
Add --nosysusers to disable automatic user/group creation at install time (#1032)
Conditionally display VCS tag in --info query
Show the tag number for unknown tags in --xml output
Check inside --root when querying for files (#2576)
Add aliases for weak dependency queries to rpmspec(8)

Add %specpartsdir to macros.in (#2532)
Add optional total/proc/thread arguments to %{getncpus} macro (#804)
Add shorthand macros for some convenient Lua string operations: %{gsub:...}, %{len:...}, %{lower:...}, %{rep:...}, %{reverse:...}, %{sub:...} and %{upper:...}
Add %{rpmversion} builtin macro for getting the running rpm version (#2523)
Calculate number of threads to use during build, not spec parse

Generate user/group provides from packaged /etc/passwd, /etc/group and sysusers.d(5) files (#1032)

Add x86-64 architecture levels (v2-v4) as architectures
Fix how x86 models are derived in rpmrc (#2535)
Use __builtin_cpu_supports in x86-64 CPU feature level detection (#2463)
Allow setting platform macro settings externally (#2578)
Behave more consistently when target arch %optflags are not defined (RhBug:2231727)

rpmGlobPath(), like rpmGlob() but also takes flags
rpmEscape() and rpmUnescape() for prepending and removing backslashes to and from special chars in a string, respectively
Add pgpVerifySignature2() and pgpPrtParams2(), like their original variants but also return descriptive error messages (on failure) or lints (on success)

rpmGlob() now only accepts one pattern in the input string, not a space separated list

Directory index related empty stubs rpmfiSetDX(), rpmfiNextD() and rpmfiInitD()
File iterator related deprecated function rpmteFI() and Python’s te.FI()
Epoch promote empty stubs rpmdsNoPromote(), rpmdsSetNoPromote(), global variable _rpmds_nopromote and Python’s ds.SetNoPromote()
Keyring related deprecated functions rpmKeyringLookup() and rpmPubkeyDig()
PGP related deprecated struct pgpDig and functions pgpPrtPkts(), pgpNewDig(), pgpCleanDig(), pgpFreeDig(), pgpDigGetParams(), pgpVerifySig(), pgpHexStr() and Python’s ts.pgpPrtPkts()
Header related deprecated functions headerUnload(), headerLoad() and headerCopyLoad()
File classifier related deprecated function rpmfcNew()
Signal related type rpmsqAction_t, defines RPMSQ_DFL, RPMSQ_IGN, RPMSQ_ERR and functions rpmsqIsCaught(), rpmsqActivate(), rpmsqSetAction(), rpmsqPoll(), rpmsqSetInterruptSafety() and Python’s signalCaught(), checkSignals(), setInterruptSafety()
File util function rpmIsGlob()

New CMake build system, replaces Autotools
Replace fakechroot(1) with proper container technology in test-suite (#1580)
Default to Sequoia crypto as per roadmap
Fix missing includes on macOS
Drop support for buggy and problematic alternative Python build method (#130, #2230)
Drop support for openssl < 1.1
Drop some other redundant and ancient configure-time checks
Split off translations to a separate project
Default to C.UTF-8 locale, allow fallback to C (#2587)
Export our libraries as a cmake find_package() config (#2471)

Any non-root ownership in the %files section (through %attr() or %defattr()) now generates an automatic dependency on the named user and/or group. This dependency can be satisfied by another package shipping a sysusers.d(5) file or the /etc/passwd and /etc/group files themselves. Existing packages shipping any of these files will have to be rebuilt with RPM 4.19 in order for them to carry the respective user and/or group provides. This may require distro-level coordination to ensure proper installation of all the affected packages. For more information, please consult the manual.
%patch without arguments (previously an alias to %patch 0) is now a build error (use %patch N instead)