A new utility to augment yum

[Jon Ciesla]

Hi.  I'm an unsponsored, aspiring Extras contributor and author of
Yumdiff, a tool to help quickly determine and resolve differences in the
software installed on two Fedora machines.  I submitted a review request,
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=206478, and after the
initial round of corrections to my packaging, there have been suggestions
made concerning Yumdiff's functionality.  I've refined Yumdiff somewhat in
response to this, and the suggestion was made to solicit feedback from the
Extras and Yum communities with regard to Yumdiff's potential niche in the
greater ecosystem.

My primary questions are these:

1. Yumdiff scratched my itch, namely to quickly compare machines to
achieve software parity.  It was born in a data center composed of
machines that change roles on a semi-regular basis.  Does it scratch
anyone else's itch?

2. If this is a useful itch to have scratched, is Yumdiff the best way to
scratch it?
2a. Might this functionality be better included in Yum?

3. If 1==yes, 2==yes and 2a==no, are there any other features that should
be included in Yumdiff?

I'm contemplating/playing around with a feature that would use screen on
the local machine to allow remotely updating multiple machines to match
the local machine, as well as a "supercompare" mode which would allow
updating the local machine to include a superset of the packages on
multiple remote machines.  Are these attractive, or would they be a step
toward feature bloat?

I'm open to any and all suggestions, and am looking forward to a frank
dialog with all interested parties.

Thank you,
Jon Ciesla

--
novus ordo absurdum