Use the ansible yum module instead of an action.

playbooks/update_packages.yml

@@ -1,7 +1,9 @@
-# requires --extra-vars="target='host1;host2;group etc' yumcommand=update'"
+# requires --extra-vars="target='host1;host2;group etc' package='python-tahrir'
 #
-# Alternatively, you could update a specific package like
-# --extra-vars="yumcommand='update python-tahrir*'"
+# Alternatively, you could update a group of packages like
+# --extra-vars="package='python-t*'"
+
+# TODO -- how do make it easy to select the infra-testing repo?
 
 - name: push packages out
   hosts: $target
@@ -11,7 +13,5 @@
   - name: expire-caches
     action: command yum clean expire-cache
     
-  - name: yum -y ${yumcommand}
-    action: command yum -y ${yumcommand}
-    async: 7200
-    poll: 15
+  - name: yum update ${package}
+    yum: name=${package} state=latest