Easy way of testing packages?

[Stefan Schulze Frielinghaus]

Hi all,

is there an easy way to test packages except of using

$ yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update <package>

For example, on May 30 a message reached the devel list that Pidgin
needs an update because of a security flaw. A new package was created
and needed karma in order to get pushed to stable quickly. Now comes the
part I do not like very much: I have to download and install the package
and all its sub-packages manually from koji. In case of the mentioned
Pidgin update, I have to check if one of the following packages are
installed on my system:

finch
finch-devel
libpurple
libpurple-devel
libpurple-perl
libpurple-tcl
pidgin
pidgin-devel
pidgin-docs
pidgin-evolution
pidgin-perl
pidgin-debuginfo

Of course, I could wait two or three days (I do not have the exact
number in mind) until the package hits updates-testing and is finally
deployed to the mirror which I use, but for a package which fixes a
security flaw, this is an awful long time. So using yum and enable the
updates testing repo is not really a good choice. But manually
downloading and checking which packages I should update is bothersome.

My question is: Is there an easy/friendly way of testing packages in
order to quickly give karma? I only found [1] suggesting yum with the
updates-testing repo enabled.

Regards,
Stefan

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Updates_Testing