DNF – The New YUM

It is said that DNF will replace YUM as the default package manager in Fedora 22. I have been using YUM since Fedora 9, it may be the time to learn something different now. I am using Fedora 20 which has DNF installed by default. If you don’t have DNF installed, simply use yum to install it –  sudo yum install dnf 🙂

DNF started as a fork of the YUM project in early 2012, and now it has a big possiblilty to replace YUM. The reasons behind it are DNF is faster, as it keeps the package metadata up to date all the time and uses a very solid depsolver that is developed and used by SUSE, also DNF supports more plugins and extensions.

Here are some interesting things to read:
Changes in DNF CLI compared to Yum
DNF blog

I compared the commands between YUM and DNF, the current DNF version has less commands available. I need to dig deeper to find out what have been missed.

yum-3.4.3
Usage: yum [options] COMMAND

List of Commands:

autoremove Remove leaf packages
check Check for problems in the rpmdb
check-update Check for available package updates
clean Remove cached data
deplist List a package’s dependencies
distribution-synchronization Synchronize installed packages to the latest available versions
downgrade downgrade a package
erase Remove a package or packages from your system
fs Acts on the filesystem data of the host, mainly for removing docs/lanuages for minimal hosts.
fssnapshot Creates filesystem snapshots, or lists/deletes current snapshots.
groups Display, or use, the groups information
help Display a helpful usage message
history Display, or use, the transaction history
info Display details about a package or group of packages
install Install a package or packages on your system
langavailable Check available languages
langinfo List languages information
langinstall Install appropriate language packs for a language
langlist List installed languages
langremove Remove installed language packs for a language
list List a package or groups of packages
load-transaction load a saved transaction from filename
makecache Generate the metadata cache
provides Find what package provides the given value
reinstall reinstall a package
repo-pkgs Treat a repo. as a group of packages, so we can install/remove all of them
repolist Display the configured software repositories
search Search package details for the given string
shell Run an interactive yum shell
swap Simple way to swap packages, instead of using shell
update Update a package or packages on your system
update-minimal Works like upgrade, but goes to the ‘newest’ package match which fixes a problem that affects your system
updateinfo Acts on repository update information
upgrade Update packages taking obsoletes into account
version Display a version for the machine and/or available repos.

Options:
-h, –help show this help message and exit
-t, –tolerant be tolerant of errors
-C, –cacheonly run entirely from system cache, don’t update cache
-c [config file], –config=[config file]
config file location
-R [minutes], –randomwait=[minutes]
maximum command wait time
-d [debug level], –debuglevel=[debug level]
debugging output level
–showduplicates show duplicates, in repos, in list/search commands
-e [error level], –errorlevel=[error level]
error output level
–rpmverbosity=[debug level name]
debugging output level for rpm
-q, –quiet quiet operation
-v, –verbose verbose operation
-y, –assumeyes answer yes for all questions
–assumeno answer no for all questions
–version show Yum version and exit
–installroot=[path] set install root
–enablerepo=[repo] enable one or more repositories (wildcards allowed)
–disablerepo=[repo] disable one or more repositories (wildcards allowed)
-x [package], –exclude=[package]
exclude package(s) by name or glob
–disableexcludes=[repo]
disable exclude from main, for a repo or for
everything
–disableincludes=[repo]
disable includepkgs for a repo or for everything
–obsoletes enable obsoletes processing during updates
–noplugins disable Yum plugins
–nogpgcheck disable gpg signature checking
–disableplugin=[plugin]
disable plugins by name
–enableplugin=[plugin]
enable plugins by name
–skip-broken skip packages with depsolving problems
–color=COLOR control whether color is used
–releasever=RELEASEVER
set value of $releasever in yum config and repo files
–downloadonly don’t update, just download
–downloaddir=DLDIR specifies an alternate directory to store packages
–setopt=SETOPTS set arbitrary config and repo options
–bugfix Include bugfix relevant packages, in updates
–security Include security relevant packages, in updates
–advisory=ADVS, –advisories=ADVS
Include packages needed to fix the given advisory, in
updates
–bzs=BZS Include packages needed to fix the given BZ, in
updates
–cves=CVES Include packages needed to fix the given CVE, in
updates
–sec-severity=SEVS, –secseverity=SEVS
Include security relevant packages matching the
severity, in updates

dnf-0.5.2-1
usage: dnf [options] COMMAND

List of Main Commands

autoerase
check-update Check for available package upgrades
clean Remove cached data
distro-sync Synchronize installed packages to the latest available versions
downgrade downgrade a package
erase Remove a package or packages from your system
group Display, or use, the groups information
help Display a helpful usage message
history Display, or use, the transaction history
info Display details about a package or group of packages
install Install a package or packages on your system
list List a package or groups of packages
makecache Generate the metadata cache
provides Find what package provides the given value
reinstall reinstall a package
repolist Display the configured software repositories
repository-packages Run commands on top of all packages in given repository
search Search package details for the given string
upgrade Upgrade a package or packages on your system
upgrade-to Upgrade a package on your system to the specified version

optional arguments:
–allowerasing allow erasing of installed packages to resolve
dependencies
-b, –best try the best available package versions in
transactions.
-C, –cacheonly run entirely from system cache, don’t update cache
-c [config file], –config [config file]
config file location
-R [minutes], –randomwait [minutes]
maximum command wait time
-d [debug level], –debuglevel [debug level]
debugging output level
–debugsolver dumps detailed solving results into files
–showduplicates show duplicates, in repos, in list/search commands
-e ERRORLEVEL, –errorlevel ERRORLEVEL
error output level
–rpmverbosity [debug level name]
debugging output level for rpm
-q, –quiet quiet operation
-v, –verbose verbose operation
-y, –assumeyes answer yes for all questions
–assumeno answer no for all questions
–version show Yum version and exit
–installroot [path] set install root
–enablerepo [repo]
–disablerepo [repo]
-x [package], –exclude [package]
exclude packages by name or glob
–disableexcludes [repo]
disable excludes
–obsoletes enable obsoletes processing during upgrades
–noplugins disable all plugins
–nogpgcheck disable gpg signature checking
–disableplugin [plugin]
disable plugins by name
–color COLOR control whether color is used
–releasever RELEASEVER
override the value of $releasever in config and repo
files
–setopt SETOPTS set arbitrary config and repo options
–refresh
-h, –help show help