DNF App Center

DNF App Center is a GTK4/libadwaita package manager and updater for Fedora-family systems. It uses AppStream for catalog metadata and libdnf5 for package state and transactions.

Features

• Browse applications by category
• Search the full package/app catalog
• Install, remove, and update packages with transaction preflight checks
• Drag-and-drop or open local .rpm files for installation
• News page backed by a configurable update feed URL
• Background updater tray service with notifications and configurable intervals

Commands

Main application:

DNF App Center
dnf-app-center

Open directly to the Updates page:

dnf-app-center --update

Updater service:

dnf-app-center-updater

Standalone update checks:

dnf-app-center-updater --check
dnf-app-center-updater --check --refresh
dnf-app-center-updater --check --json

Return codes for --check:

• 0 = no updates available
• 100 = updates available
• 2 = error

Configuration

Per-user updater/news settings are stored in:

~/.config/dnf-app-center/updater.json

Current keys:

• enabled
• notifications
• interval_value
• interval_unit
• update_feed_url

Example:

{
  "enabled": true,
  "notifications": true,
  "interval_value": 12,
  "interval_unit": "hours",
  "update_feed_url": "https://updates.nobaraproject.org/updates.txt"
}

Polkit Integration

DNF App Center uses polkit (pkexec) for privilege escalation when installing, removing, or updating packages.

Nobara Integration

For Nobara Linux systems, a polkit rule is included to allow nobara-sync and nobara-updater to run without additional authentication when called from the already-authenticated privileged helper. This prevents double password prompts when using the "Select All and Update" feature.

The polkit rule is automatically installed to:

/usr/share/polkit-1/rules.d/50-dnf-app-center-nobara-sync.rules

Manual Installation (Development)

If you're running from source and want to test the polkit rule:

sudo cp polkit/50-dnf-app-center-nobara-sync.rules /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/

Authentication Caching

The app includes a "Remember auth" checkbox in the top bar that caches your authentication for the session. When enabled, you only need to enter your password once per session rather than for each package operation.

Building locally

Install typical Fedora build dependencies:

sudo dnf builddep ./dnf-app-center.spec

Build an RPM from the source tarball/spec:

mkdir -p ~/rpmbuild/{SOURCES,SPECS}
cp dnf-app-center-*.tar.gz ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/
cp dnf-app-center.spec ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/
rpmbuild -ba ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/dnf-app-center.spec

Build options

The RPM spec supports overriding the default news/update feed URL at build time:

rpmbuild -ba dnf-app-center.spec --define '_update_feed_url https://example.com/updates.txt'

That value becomes the default update_feed_url used when the user has not overridden it in their own config.

License

This project is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2. See COPYING for the full license text.