Little update script

[jlittle]

When the apt list output goes over a page, I get annoyed by it's lack of readability, and the stupid warning if I pipe the list through a paginator (that is, less). I don't have a good solution.

I've given up on apt list --upgradable, and now prefer an aptitude command that gives more useful output, for example, today:

$ aptitude -F '%12p %t %V %d'  search '~U' 
libnss3                  focal-security         2:3.49.1-1ubun Network Security Service libraries
libopenexr24             focal-security         2.3.0-6ubuntu0 runtime files for the OpenEXR image library
linux-base               focal-security,focal-u 4.5ubuntu3.1   Linux image base package
snapd                    focal-updates          2.45.1+20.04   Daemon and tooling that enable snap packages

aptitude makes a pretty good stab at adjusting the column widths to suit the width of the terminal window, but it's not ideal, so I mucked around with cut, paste, and column -t:

#!/bin/bash
work=$(mktemp --tmpdir ai2XXXX)
trap "rm $work" EXIT

if aptitude -F '%12p %t %V %d'  search '~U' > $work
then
 unset LESS
 paste -d ' ' <(cut -d ' ' -f -4 < $work  | column -t) \
              <(cut -d ' ' -f 5- < $work) | less -eX
fi

for example, today:

libnss3       focal-security                2:3.49.1-1ubuntu1.2  Network Security Service libraries
libopenexr24  focal-security                2.3.0-6ubuntu0.2     runtime files for the OpenEXR image library
linux-base    focal-security,focal-updates  4.5ubuntu3.1         Linux image base package
snapd         focal-updates                 2.45.1+20.04         Daemon and tooling that enable snap packages

less is cool here because it will redisplay the output if you widen the window, so if the output gets wrapped too much because some column is extra wide, like the linux-base line in my example, I can resize the window to make it readable.

[Don B. Cilly]

Interesting

[GreyGeek]

Interesting indeed!
Appending that command to "sudp apt update & " and making it an alias would be the perfect update listing command.

EDIT:
I started experimenting with making the alias for jlittle's aptitude command, which appears to be above my 79 yr old pay grade, but inadvertently opened the cli menu for aptitude, which I never knew existed. Neat little menu!

[©TriMoon™]

and for anyone who might be vaguely interested in a kdialog+xterm script,
and to relieve the boredom of a rainy confined day...

You might try to use zenity instead of kdialog to make it usable on more distros
Also to prevent the script generating a needless call-stack, you should not re-execute your script inside itself...
Just use a while/do or untill/do loop...

while list-1; do list-2; done
until list-1; do list-2; done

The while command continuously executes the list list-2 as long as the last command in the list list-1 returns an exit status of zero. The until command is identical to the while command, except that the test is negated: list-2 is executed as long as the last command in list-1 returns a non-zero exit status. The exit status of the while and until commands is the exit status of the last command executed in list-2, or zero if none was executed.

Happy coding