DNF5 Isn't Ready For Fedora 39 - Now Delayed To Fedora 41

For over a year Fedora / Red Hat has been planning for major package management changes with DNF5. The hope for months has been to use DNF5 by default for Fedora 39 but that is no longer going to work out... FESCo has decided to reject DNF5 for Fedora 39 and then due to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 branching with Fedora 40, this means DNF5 isn't expected by default until at least Fedora 41 in late 2024.

Over DNF4, DNF5 has been promoted as providing better performance and a nicer user experience. DNF5 has been talked about for vastly improving the package management experience on Fedora and eventually for RHEL as well. But now DNF5 isn't ready to go for Fedora 39 and in turn also means that RHEL 10 isn't going to see DNF5 by default. Due to the RHEL 10 branching, DNF5 as a result isn't expected to be the default until the Fedora 41 cycle for H2'2024.

Among recent missing pieces for DNF5-by-default has been ELN defaulting to DNF 4, various settings issues, various DNF sub-commands not being implemented relative to DNF4, certain DNF sub-commands with certain options do not work, high memory usage is in the process of being resolved, and other items deemed not ready. The list can be found via this FESCo ticket.

At today's FESCo meeting for the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee, it was decided that DNF5 simply isn't ready for the Fedora 39 timeframe.

* AGREED: APPROVED(+7,0,-0) The switch to DNF5 will be postponed (likely to Fedora 41, to be determined by the Change Owners) and reverted in Rawhide for the time being (i.e. dnf 4 will provide /usr/bin/dnf again). (tstellar, 17:27:21)