Why do we need this when there are perfectly good 'yum' and 'rpm' python packages?

Simple really: they don't work on systems without yum or rpm (eg. debian, osx).

I had a need to manipulate and/or extract data from rpms and yum repositories to manage rpms, but wasn't neccesarily running a fedora/rhel/centos system. So I build a platform agnostic system to help me.

I have another project yum2s3 which was the driving factor behind building this library. For this reason, the functionality in this library is driven primary by the needs of that project.

Please do! I've done my best to make this a test driven project, so if you can improve my tests; please do. If you can write new tests; please do. If you can expand functionality after writing tests; please do. But please, write tests. For the most part I'm not fussy about branching and such with pull requests. But please write some tests. In conclusion, tests.