[Bug 1988819] Re: When apt keeps back packages due to phased updates, it should say so

[Seth Arnold]

An alternative, proposed by user avih on IRC, is to not report any of
these packages to the user at all:

<avih> however, these phased updates are quite a big list which adds a lot of noise to my regular dist-upgrade, and it interferes  with me reviewing what's about to get updated
<avih> the kept back list is quite bigger than the list of things to update...
<avih> arraybolt3: if this is indeed the standard order of things, why am i being shown at all what it's NOT going to install for reasons not related to errors or conflicts?

I can see a lot of appeal to not telling the user information -- from
their perspective, the packages don't actually exist yet.

Maybe it'll cause confusion if of two machines sitting right next to
each other, one can see the updates and the other cannot. That's not
ideal.

But holding information back from the user doesn't require new strings,
and casual users with one machine might never notice.

It's just fun to see an alternative idea that's 180 degrees different
from my initial thought. :)

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1988819

Title:
  When apt keeps back packages due to phased updates, it should say so

Status in apt package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  After phased updates have been introduced, it may happen that apt
  upgrade shows packages as upgradable but ends up not upgrading them.
  In this case the packages are indicated as being "kept back".

  Unfortunately, the feedback provided about this to the user is not
  very informative. The user sees the packages being kept back and
  thinks something is going wrong on the system.

  When packages are kept back because of phased updates, apt should say
  so e.g., it should say that the upgrade is delayed.

  Incidentally note that aptitude does not respect phased updates.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 22.04
  Package: apt 2.4.7
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.15.0-47.51-generic 5.15.46
  Uname: Linux 5.15.0-47-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu82.1
  Architecture: amd64
  CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
  CurrentDesktop: KDE
  Date: Tue Sep  6 10:05:14 2022
  EcryptfsInUse: Yes
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-02-16 (933 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" - Release amd64 (20191017)
  SourcePackage: apt
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to jammy on 2022-06-03 (94 days ago)

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