The RPM v4 packaging format has been used by Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora and its derivatives for more than two decades. With next year's Fedora 46 release, Fedora Linux may finally transition to the modern RPM v6 packaging format.
A change proposal has been filed for moving the entire Fedora Linux distribution from the "aging" RPM v4 format over to native RPM v6 packaging. RPM v6 is much more modern and better designed than the RPM v4 format and supports modern cryptographic algorithms, 64-bit size tags, UTF-8 encoded strings always, and other design improvements over RPM v4. Red Hat engineer Panu Matilainen filed the change proposal this week for FESCo to consider in moving Fedora Linux to the RPM v6 world.
With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 11 expected to be based on around the Fedora 46 state, this would also usher in RPM v6 packages for RHEL 11.
The change proposal classifies the RPM v6 benefits as:
"The currently used v4 format is a quarter century old, and this shows in things like use of obsolete cryptography, size limitations and so on. The v6 format is a essentially a face-lift to bring the RPM package format up to date, and eliminate some quirks and dark corners in the process. Many of the features already exist as extensions to the v4 format, silently used as necessary. As such, this change is largely invisible to the average user. It's about future-proofing the packaging ecosystem."
The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee still has to vote on the proposal, but given the impact and alignment for RHEL 11, presumably this RPM v6 adoption will be non-contentious.
Fedora 45 will be released in two weeks or so while Fedora 46 will come out in April.