Questions[package-management](server)

I am starting with ansible and will use it, among others, to install packages on several Linux distros.

I see in the docs that the yum and apt commands are separated - what would be the easiest way to unify them and use something like this:

- name: install the latest version of Apache
  unified_install: name=httpd state=latest

instead of

- name: install the latest version of Apache on CentOS
  yum: name=httpd state=latest
  when: ansible_os_family == "RedHat"

- name: install the latest version of Apache on Debian
  apt: pkg=httpd state=latest 
  when: ansible_os_family == "Debian"

I understand that the two package managers are different, but they still have a set of common basic usages. Other orchestators (salt for instance) have a single install command.

Coming from an ubuntu perspective, if I want to check to see what additional packages will be installed/upgraded I can use apt-get --simulate install <package name>

Is there something similar for yum? Our Red hat box (yum) is our production server, so I would like to see exactly what will be happening before I actually install some package.

Couldn't really find a good solution, someone suggested:

yum --assumeno install <package name>

but this returned:

Command line error: no such option: --assumeno

yum version: 3.2.22

OS version: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.6 (Tikanga)

Any ideas or suggestions would be welcome.

I currently have Nginx installed via the instructions on the Nginx site:

nginx=stable
sudo su -
add-apt-repository ppa:nginx/$nginx
apt-get update 
apt-get install

I have configured Nginx and it has been running great for a little while. Now, I want to add some custom modules--say, the Upload Progress Module. The instructions for this module say to add --add-module=path/to/nginx_uploadprogress_module to your ./configure command. However, I did not install Nginx from source.

What is the best way to handle this situation? Is it possible to tell APT to compile from source and pass options to ./configure? Can I compile over the existing installation? What about paths--how do I make them match? Or do I have to remove the APT managed version and start over?

I have a debian (well technically ubuntu) source package, i.e. the .dsc, the .tar.gz, etc., I want to build this. The dpkg-buildpackage fails, since I don't have all the build dependencies.

Normally I'd use apt-get build-dep, but this package isn't in apt.

Is there a 'clean', 'proper' way to install all the build dependencies, given a source package. I know I could just open the debian/control file, but I'm curious if there's a 'proper' way.

I have installed build-essential, and have all the normal compilers etc., this package requires extra software.

Say you're running a server and you don't want to upgrade to Testing (Squeeze) from Stable (Lenny) to just install a required package or two.

What's the best way of installing only certain packages from Testing?