[Yum] "update --dry-run" equivalent output from yum or yum-utils?

[jimjcollins at comcast.net]

Hello,

Does yum or yum utils (repoquery likely) give the ability to non-interactively and easily (single command or short sequence of commands) generate a list of available update packages plus any new dependent packages which would be required to to successfully install those update packages on a server? "yum list updates" or "repoquery -a --pkgnarrow=updates" don't appear to do the dependency analysis and from other threads it seems that using "yum list updates" non-interactively is frowned on (screen scraping thread, etc.). And "yum updates" can't properly be used non-interactively as there appears to be no "defaultno" option to answering the install question even if I wanted to screen scrape, etc.

I read this yum list thread which indicates need for "yum list updates --with-dependencies", but I can't see that such functionality has been implemented in either yum 2.x or 3.x: 

https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/yum/2004-August/004974.html

Perhaps such functionality is in repoquery but I missed it?

I currently use "up2date --dry-run" for patch auditing on RHEL3 and RHEL4 servers so I can view ahead of patch time exactly what packages are required in order to bring a server  up to date relative to a set of yum repositories. RedHat maintains an "up2date to yum" Rosetta stone of sorts at http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_80_11223.shtm but there is no indication of a yum equivalent of "update --dry-run" on that page.
 
Thanks for any advice.
 
- Jim C.
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