versionlock is a plugin that takes a set of names and versions for packages and excludes all other versions of those packages. This allows you to protect packages from being updated by newer versions. Alternately, it accepts a specific package version to exclude from updates, e.g. for when it’s necessary to skip a specific release of a package that has known issues.

The plugin provides a command versionlock which allows you to view and edit the list of locked packages easily.

The plugin will walk each line of the versionlock file, and parse out the name and version of the package. It will then exclude any package by that name that doesn’t match one of the versions listed within the file. This is basically the same as using dnf –exclude for the package name itself (as you cannot exclude installed packages), but dnf will still see the versions you have installed/versionlocked as available so that dnf reinstall will still work, etc.

It can also work in the opposite way, like a fast exclude, by prefixing a ‘!’ character to the version recorded in the lock list file. This specifically excludes a package that matches the version exactly.