Comment 13 for bug 1992026

I would suggest that this not be implemented until the mechanism to comply
with the utility's stated functionality is there (-qq), and not vice versa,
as this is quite antithetical to the philosophy of a toolchain in general.

On Mon, Oct 10, 2022 at 8:55 AM Robie Basak <email address hidden>
wrote:

> Running /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check will give you machine
> readable "how many updates are available" numbers for security and non-
> security updates. It's called by /usr/lib/update-notifier/update-motd-
> updates-available which is called from /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99update-
> notifier in a APT::Update::Post-Invoke-Success hook, and then presented
> to the user through /etc/update-motd.d/90-updates-available. This may be
> an internal implementation detail of update-notifier. I'm not sure to
> what extent it's a public API, but in practice calling /usr/lib/update-
> notifier/apt-check for machine readable information has been
> consistently stable over many releases. If you want to use something
> that isn't officially stable but works in practice and this gives you
> the information you need, using this is probably the best option.
>
> On -qq not being honoured by the hook, this is a good point, but I
> suggest that you file a separate bug for it - the fix would need to be a
> separate effort, so tracking it separately makes sense.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1992026
>
> Title:
> Ubuntu Pro APT integration is a bit much
>
> Status in ubuntu-advantage-tools package in Ubuntu:
> In Progress
>
> Bug description:
> When we designed the whole hook mechanism for what was ua esm back in
> the day, the intent was for this to be an interface to tastefully
> display information about additional updates you are missing out on
> without a subscription.
>
> The new Ubuntu Pro message crosses the line of a tasteful additional
> information and is negatively impacting apt user experience. The top
> message I saw today on /r/Ubuntu was
>
>
> https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/xxafiu/how_to_remove_advertisements_from_apt/
>
> I'd vastly prefer hooks not to use their freedom to display
> information irrelevant at the specific point. At this hook, the user
> should be notified about updates, like updates in Ubuntu pro they are
> missing out on, or I guess pending blocked snap refreshes are valid
> options.
>
> For messages like the Ubuntu Pro beta announcement, we already have
> the motd mechanism.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-advantage-tools/+bug/1992026/+subscriptions
>
>

--
Ken MacInnis - kcm at clueful dot org - http://www.clueful.org/