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. :) -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to apt in Ubuntu. 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) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/1988819/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp