dnf5 update dnf has different behavior than dnf4 when the package is already updated

[rcritten]

dnf is treated specially when updating itself. Updating other packages seems to retain the old behavior "Nothing to do."

On Fedora 40:

# dnf update -y dnf
Last metadata expiration check: 0:04:44 ago on Thu 14 Nov 2024 11:58:48 AM EST.
Dependencies resolved.
Nothing to do.
Complete!
# echo $?
0

On Fedora 41:

dnf update -y dnf
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Failed to resolve the transaction:
Packages for argument 'dnf' available, but not installed.
# echo $?
1

There is actually not an update available for dnf and dnf is definitely installed (e.g. it is executing).

Is there a reason that dnf treats itself differently than other packages? It would be nice for scripting to have consistency.

[jrohel]

The output of the command says: Packages for argument 'dnf' available, but not installed.

There is actually not an update available for dnf and dnf is definitely installed (e.g. it is executing).

No, dnf is not really installed. The dnf5 package is installed on the system, and for compatibility reasons there is a dnf link that points to dnf5.

# ls -l $(which dnf) 
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root root 4 12 Nov 01.00 /usr/bin/dnf -> dnf5

Thus: dnf5 upgrade -y dnf5
Using a compatible dnf link and a compatible update alias, we can write: dnf update -y dnf5