Three months after rolling out an RC, RPM 6.1 has been released as the latest stable update to the widely used RPM Package Manager.
One of the most noticeable improvements is faster package installation on modern Linux systems. RPM now closes file descriptors more efficiently when running on Linux kernel 5.11 or newer with glibc 2.34 or later. According to the developers, this can reduce installation time by around 26% in some cases.
Transaction handling has also improved. The keystore now uses its own lock instead of sharing the transaction lock, fixing a regression in RPM 6.0 that blocked all RPM database queries during a transaction.
At the same time, RPM 6.1 restores NSS-based user and group lookups by default, which RPM 4.19 disabled. Importantly, NSS lookups remain disabled for operations with --root, while administrators can still disable them through RPM macros. Users and groups can now also be provided by the system runtime environment through NSS, in addition to packages.
Another significant development is RPM’s macro processor. Macro behavior can now be modified at definition time using a new modifier syntax. Two modifiers are initially available: literal expansion and one-shot expansion. In addition, %define gains new -e and -g options.
For package builders, RPM now exports the build script environment into an rpmbuild.env file inside %{builddir}. Moreover, rpmbuild now recognizes k as a build-stage argument for running the %check scriptlet, which developers say is particularly useful with the --short-circuit option.
RPM 6.1 also improves diagnostics when binaries do not match the package architecture. Instead of a less informative failure, RPM now reports the affected package or subpackage along with the filenames and file types causing the error.
On the security and signing side, rpmsign can now sign files using PKCS#11 tokens, making it possible to use compatible hardware-backed or external cryptographic devices as part of RPM signing workflows.
Package verification output has also been cleaned up, addressing cases where RPM could previously produce excessive, misleading, or incorrect messages during verification.
Regarding documentation, RPM 6.1 adds several new manual pages covering dependency generators, RPM design, scriptlets, sysusers, and ELF dependency handling. The rpmbuild manual now describes the build process in greater detail, while rpmkeys documentation has been expanded to cover the overall verification policy.
Finally, RPM 6.1 introduces a new release model inspired by the Linux kernel. The change is intended to establish a more predictable development and release cadence for future versions of the package manager.
For additional details, see the release notes.
