The answer here is yes. Since yum manages RPMs and running rpm -qi <package>
will list a Build Date
field (which is part of the package header).
After digging around on the net, the yum python libraries, and working off some of the code samples on the yum wiki, I was able to code up a working sample which lists the latest version of a package.
#!/usr/bin/python
import sys
import yum
package = sys.argv[1:]
yb = yum.YumBase()
yb.conf.cache = 0 # Must run as root to search packages w/o cache
pl = yb.doPackageLists(patterns=package, pkgnarrow='all', showdups=True)
print 'Searching for latest version of package: ' + str(package[0])
if pl.available:
package = ''
latest = 0
for pkg in sorted(pl.available):
# XXX Works with sqlitesack, unsure if it works with rpmsack
buildtime = pkg['buildtime']
# If we're looking at the latest package, update the version
# and textual name for reference
if max(latest, buildtime) == buildtime:
latest = buildtime
package = pkg
print "Latest Package"
print package