Dear Maintainer,

When running `apt upgrade', `apt-listchanges' is run after packages are
downloaded and before they are actually upgraded.  The downloading phase
can be quite long, especially when upgrading from one major Debian
version to the next and I may attend to other things during that time,
and when I come back, I found the upgrade was stuck in displaying the
news from packages by `apt-listchanges', and after quitting, I'll have
to wait another long time until the upgrades finish.

As `apt-listchanges' just displays the news from packages, and does not
offer a way to stop or postpone package upgrades, I wonder whether it
would be possible to run it after packages are upgraded, so that people
like me won't be surprised that we'll have to wait for another long
time.  I know there are unattended upgrade options, but for upgrading
from one major version to the next, it would be better to monitor the
process somehow which would benefit more from this since the process can
be quite long.

Control: reassign -1 apt-listchanges

This depends on the configuration. On my Debian/unstable machines I've
set "which=both" in /etc/apt/listchanges.conf in order to also get the
changelogs and "confirm=1" in order to confirm the upgrade after I read
the changelogs.

Note that you can use a noninteractive frontend; see the
apt-listchanges(1) man page.

Hi Vincent,

Vincent Lefevre <vincent@vinc17.net> writes:

Ack. According to "man apt-listchanges", if "confirm" is used, and a
user chooses not to proceed, apt will abort, though it's unclear whether
it will only affect the package with the NEWS entry or the "apt upgrade"
session as a whole.

Understood. Though this bug report is more about having a better default
user experience during system upgrades, especially when there are huge
number of upgrades that may take hours and stopping in the middle may be
inconvenient and make the process even longer.

I wonder whether apt or apt-listchanges may prompt user a to choose how
to handle package NEWS, e.g. let user choose the noninteractive or
confirm mode before starting?