I've been using smpatch(!M) on my Solaris system for quite a while. It ain't no yum/apt-get, but it's pretty good anyhow.
One thing I've been really missing though, is some sort of --verbose flag to the thing. It tends to be somewhat slow, and I find myself wondering very often "Gee, wonder what it's doing"
Not anymore, I've finally discovered how to make it output a boatload of debugging information out. It's not as simple as --verbose, but it works.
$> smpatch analyze -C patchpro.log.level=3 -C patchpro.debug=true