Hi everyone,
The DNF team is currently reviewing DNF compatibility with YUM 3 and we'd like to get feedback on this one: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1120253

rpmdb checksum is a checksum of all installed RPMs
It has no cryptographical value, it's just an unique ID of RPMs on a system before and after each transaction and it's used in dnf history info and dnf history list.
If checksums of 2 following transactions do not match, DNF indicates that.
This happens if a user installs an RPM by hand via rpm command.

Then `dnf history list` looks like:
     2 | install bar | 2018-01-01 02:00 | Install        |    2  <
     1 | install foo | 2018-01-01 01:00 | Install        |    7 >
the "<" and ">" characters indicate discontinuity in rpmdb hashes

Here's the question:
DNF computes the checksum from RPM N-E:V-R.A
while YUM computed it from E:N-V-R.A

We'd like to change the behavior to be compatible with YUM again.
This would create 1 discontinuity in rpmdb checksums in the history,
because from that point a new algorithm will be used.

Are there any concerns about such change?
I believe that >90% users wouldn't notice anything as it's related to the history database only.

thanks,
Daniel