zypper is too verbose Needs a verbose flag

English Soapbox
#1

Running zypper I get

The following 169 package updates will NOT be installed:
with a large number of listings
Do we need to see the details, unless we ask for them?
Is not the summary sufficient?

Further in the output… after replying y for affirming installation

Reams of
Retrieving delta: ./x86_64/lvm2-2.02.98-43.13.1_43.17.1.x86_64.drpm, 103.8 KiB
Retrieving: lvm2-2.02.98-43.13.1_43.17.1.x86_64.drpm …[done (4.7 KiB/s)]
Applying delta: ./lvm2-2.02.98-43.13.1_43.17.1.x86_64.drpm …[done]
Retrieving package perl-Mail-SpamAssassin-3.4.0-44.8.1.x86_64
(2/8), 818.3 KiB ( 2.7 MiB unpacked)
Retrieving delta: ./x86_64/perl-Mail-SpamAssassin-3.4.0-44.4.1_44.8.1.x86_64.drpm, 52.1 KiB

and later again

You know of the verbosity. Why not summaries?

Using the above as an example, much of the above could be represented by the last line
Retrieving delta: ./x86_64/perl-Mail-SpamAssassin-3.4.0-44.4.1_44.8.1.x86_64.drpm, 52.1 KiB

You may have noticed that the outputs are in groups of 4 lines. Why present the internal details ad boredom?
Who actually looks at it?

Zypper is way to wordy. If I redirect output to >zypper.wordiness, will I see the Yes/No to proceed?

#2

Zypper is a nice open project, feel free to hack it and submit patches to the Zypp development team.

I do.

You will not. However you can use a combination of various parameters to achieve zen like silence;

zypper -q up -yl

to suppress output, answer yes and agree to licenses if there are any, like flash-player updates do. Works for in, remove etc.

#3

I currently get 59. But it only takes a few lines.

# zypper -v up

will give a far more verbose output, with at least one line for each of those packages.

In my case, the 59 packages show up mainly because I have configured the KDE:Extra repo, but I am only using one or two packages from that repo. If I disable that repo, I’ll get a smaller list of “wont be updated”.

If you prefer to see a clean list of what will be updated, then try:

# zypper lu

That lists only the update that could be done, one per line and listing the relevant repo for each.

Personally, I’m quite happy with “zypper” output, with the exception of its ridiculous use of colors.