Given an rpm package name, query the yum database for updates

Question

I was imagining a 3-line Python script to do this but the yum Python API is
impenetrable. Is this even possible?

Is writing a wrapper for ‘yum list package-name’ the only way to do this?

Answer 1

As Seth points out, you can use the updates APIs to ask if something is
available as an update. For something that’s close to what the “yum list” does
you probably want to use the doPackageLists(). Eg.

import os, sys
import yum

yb = yum.YumBase()
yb.conf.cache = os.geteuid() != 1
pl = yb.doPackageLists(patterns=sys.argv[1:])
if pl.installed:
    print "Installed Packages"
    for pkg in sorted(pl.installed):
        print pkg
if pl.available:
    print "Available Packages"
    for pkg in sorted(pl.available):
        print pkg, pkg.repo
if pl.reinstall_available:
    print "Re-install Available Packages"
    for pkg in sorted(pl.reinstall_available):
        print pkg, pkg.repo