I know how to list available packages from the repos and so on, but how can I find a list that matches up equivalent meta-packages, such as the build-essential.Is there such a thing and if not what would be a sensible approach to find such close/similar matches?
What would be the RHEL package corresponding to build-essential in Ubuntu?
linux;ubuntu;rhel;package management
You won't find exactly matching package groups for unrelated distributions, they are different distributions precisely because they don't agree on some fundamental issues. Note that different distributions select different upstream packages to install, and also group/split upstream sources differently before adding in local configuration. Most recognize the split between runtime and stuff required for development (normally -devel or some such in the package name), and perhaps documentation and extra examples. Your best bet is to dissect the group of the source and install the respective packages on the destination. You can try to match the detailed package list from the previous step to whatever grouping the target provides. Probably the group names give some guidance, or you could look at some webpage giving an overview of the package structuring (can't find anything for Fedora, just the differences between the latest and older ones, sorry). Lots of work, sure.