DNF versionlock Plugin

Description

versionlock is a plugin that takes a set of names and versions for packages and excludes all other versions of those packages. This allows you to protect packages from being updated by newer versions. Alternately, it accepts a specific package version to exclude from updates, e.g. for when it’s necessary to skip a specific release of a package that has known issues.

The plugin provides a command versionlock which allows you to view and edit the list of locked packages easily.

The plugin will walk each line of the versionlock file, and parse out the name and version of the package. It will then exclude any package by that name that doesn’t match one of the versions listed within the file. This is basically the same as using dnf –exclude for the package name itself (as you cannot exclude installed packages), but dnf will still see the versions you have installed/versionlocked as available so that dnf reinstall will still work, etc.

It can also work in the opposite way, like a fast exclude, by prefixing a ‘!’ character to the version recorded in the lock list file. This specifically excludes a package that matches the version exactly.

Note the versionlock plugin does not apply any excludes in non-transactional operations like repoquery, list, info, etc.

Synopsis

dnf versionlock [add|exclude|list|delete|clear] [<package-spec>]

Arguments

<package-spec>

Package spec to lock or exclude.

Subcommands

dnf versionlock add <package-spec>

Add a versionlock for all available packages matching the spec. It means that only versions of packages represented by <package-spec> will be available for transaction operations.

dnf versionlock exclude <package-spec>

Add an exclude (within versionlock) for the available packages matching the spec. It means that packages represented by <package-spec> will be excluded from transaction operations.

dnf versionlock list or dnf versionlock

List the current versionlock entries.

dnf versionlock delete <package-spec>

Remove any matching versionlock entries.

dnf versionlock clear

Remove all versionlock entries.

Configuration

/etc/dnf/plugins/versionlock.conf

The minimal content of conf file should contain main sections with enabled and locklist parameters.

locklist

This option is a string that points to the file which has the versionlock information in it. Note that the file has to exist (or the versionlock plugin will make dnf exit). However, it can be empty.

The file takes entries in the format of package-spec (optionally prefixed with ‘!’ for excludes). See specifying_packages-label.

Notes

A specified package does not have to exist within the available cache of repository data to be considered valid for locking or exclusion. This is by design, to accommodate use cases such as a presently disabled repository. However, a package must exist in the repository cache when the add or exclude subcommands are invoked for it.