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Description of problem:
$ yum check-updates <provides>
will not recognize some pending updates which are recognized by
$ yum update <provides>

This leads to a situation where check-updates does not see any updates, but in fact there are updates.

This bug apepars when an installed packages "Provides" something, and a pending update package has a higher "Provides".

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
yum in RHEL 7.2

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install a package which Provides: foo-1.0
2. Create a repo with a package which Provides: foo-2.0
3. yum check-updates foo
4. yum update foo

Actual results:
After 3: No update suggested
After 4: Update of foo is performed, afterwards foo-2.0 is installed

Expected results:
After 3: foo-2.0 is suggested/seen as an update
After 4: Update of foo is performed, afterwards foo-2.0 is installed

Additional info:

There is also a test case to highlight the issue:

https://gist.github.com/fabiand/79f5b940f7fc6bc2dccf5f1963a12d47

Check-update operates on package names, basically like "list updates" and "list obsoletes" but with the error code return.

Trying to fix it for just virtual provides is probably not a good idea.


Instead I'd change what you are doing to either:

yum check-update <list of pkg wildcards>

./my-yum-api-script

...where the later checks what you want about any possible pending transactions.