• Sat Oct 24 17:15:09 CEST 2020 rpm.org's rpm 4.16.0 ready for testing
• Tue Oct 27 23:21:17 CET 2020 rpm4 on carme
• Wed Dec 2 16:08:18 CET 2020 rpm.org, the story so far (summary)

All of the below is fully automated within the package using Obsoletes/Provides/Requires or postinst/posttrans scriptlets.

Quoting https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Sqlite_Rpmdb

The current rpm database implementation is based on Berkeley DB 5.x, a version which is unmaintained upstream for several years now. Berkeley DB 6.x is license incompatible so moving to that is not an option. In addition, the existing rpmdb implementation is notoriously unreliable as it's not transactional and has no other means to detect inconsistencies either. Changing to a more sustainable database implementation is long overdue. We propose to change the default rpmdb format to the new sqlite based implementation.

• The rpm database format changes from Berkeley DB to SQLite, conversion is automatic after rpm package set update. Backup of the old database is saved as /var/lib/rpm.rpmbackup-VERSION-RELEASE, using version and release of the package that is installed (not the old one). Ex. if the old package was rpm-5.4.15-58 and the new one is rpm-4.16.1.2-1, the backup of the database will be in /var/lib/rpm.rpmbackup-4.16.1.2-1.
• Users who have a particular need to stay on Berkeley DB backend can still do so by overriding the configuration manually (eg. echo '%_db_backend bdb' » /etc/rpm/macros) before updating rpm package.
• It is also possible to convert back bu overriding _db_backend and running rpm –rebuilddb.

While rpm5 provided only Python 2 bindings, rpm.org rpm provides only Python 3 bindings.

rpm.org rpm does not support hrmib integration.

• Suggests are now Recommends,
• noautoreq* and noautoprov* must be converted to __requires_exclude* and __provides_exclude* respectively.

• Obsoletes/Provides must follow the package naming rules, they cannot contain characters like () or /, what means packages cannot depend on path/files or same virtual dependency names (ex. perl::Foo is not accepted).
• Minor spec syntax changes
  • Spaces around operators in dependencies are required (ex. BuildRequires: foo-devel >= 1.0)
  • Bare words are no longer supported, please use “…” (ex. %if “%{_lib}” != “lib”)
  • Symlinks are always packaged with 777 mode and using %attr() for symlink is reported as warning
  • Requires(triggerpostun) is not supported, replace with postun.

• rpm.org rpm generates rpmlib(ShortCircuited) dependencies when package is build using –short-circuit option. To disable that add disable_short_circuited_deps 0 to ~/.rpmrc
• Patch is now run with –fuzz=0 option