DNF-POST-TRANSACTION-ACTIONS(8)

💖 DNF-POST-TRANSACTION-ACTIONS(8) 💖

okay bestie, pull up a chair, we're talking about dnf-post-transaction-actions — a little plugin from the dnf-plugins-core crew that lets you make stuff happen after an RPM transaction finishes. literally the "and then what" of package management. 🎀

---

✨ NAME ✨

dnf-post-transaction-actions — the DNF post transaction actions Plugin. that's it, that's the name, and honestly? iconic. 👑

---

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so here's the vibe: this plugin lets you define actions that get executed once an RPM transaction is done. and each action can define a (glob-like) filtering rule, either on the package NEVRA or on package files, plus whether the package was installed or removed. all of that lives in something called action files. 🦋

---

💅 CONFIGURATION 💅

the plugin's config lives right here:

/etc/dnf/plugins/post-transaction-actions.conf

and every single config option chills in the [main] section. no cap.

• enabled — whether the plugin is enabled. default value is True. (yes bestie, it's on by default, she's eager like that 💖)
• actiondir — the path to the directory holding your action files. heads up: action files must have the .action extension or they simply do not count. default value is /etc/dnf/plugins/post-transaction-actions.d/.

---

🫶 ACTION FILE FORMAT 🫶

empty lines? ignored. lines starting with a # character? also ignored. we love a comment that minds its own business. 🙈

each non-comment line defines an action, and it's made of three items separated by colons:

package_filter:transaction_state:command

let's break it down, one by one, no skipping. ⭐

package_filter

a (glob-like) filtering rule applied on the package NEVRA — and yes, also in the shortened forms — or on package files.

transaction_state

this one filters packages according to their state in the transaction. three options, take your pick:

• in — packages that appeared on the system (downgrade, install, obsolete, reinstall, upgrade)
• out — packages that disappeared from the system (downgraded, obsoleted, remove, upgraded)
• any — all packages. every single one. the whole friend group. 💀

command

any shell command, bestie. ANY. and the following variables inside the command get substituted:

• ${name}, $name — package name
• ${arch}, $arch — package arch
• ${ver}, $ver — package version
• ${rel}, $rel — package release
• ${epoch}, $epoch — package epoch
• ${repoid}, $repoid — package repository id
• ${state}, $state — the change of package state in the transaction: downgrade, downgraded, install, obsolete, obsoleted, reinstall, reinstalled, remove, upgrade, upgraded

---

the shell command gets evaluated for every package that matched the package_filter and the transaction_state. but here's the plot twist: after variable substitution, any duplicate commands get removed, and each command is only executed once per transaction. one and done, we don't do encores. 💅

as for order? the order of execution of the commands follows the order in the action files, but it may differ from the order of packages in the transaction. so — when you define several action lines for the same package_filter, those lines will be executed in the order they were defined in the action file, when the package_filter matches a package during the transaction_state state. HOWEVER, the order of when a particular package_filter gets invoked depends on the position of the corresponding package in the transaction. yes it's a little unhinged. yes it's fine. 🌀

🌈 An example action file 🌈

# log all packages (state, nevra, repo) in transaction into a file.
*:any:echo '${state} ${name}-${epoch}:${ver}-${rel}.${arch} repo ${repoid}' >>/tmp/post-trans-actions-trans.log

# The same shell command (after variables substitution) is executed only once per transaction.
*:any:echo '${repoid}' >>/tmp/post-trans-actions-repos
# will write each repo only once to /tmp/post-trans-actions-repos, even if multiple packages from
# the same repo were matched

look at her go. 🥹

---

👑 AUTHOR 👑

See AUTHORS in your Core DNF Plugins distribution.

---

💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

2023, Red Hat, Licensed under GPLv2+

---

bestie this is version 4.3.1, dated Jan 22, 2023, and it's part of the dnf-plugins-core distribution. go forth and post-transaction-action responsibly. slay, periodt. 💖✨🎀🦋🌸🫶