A little while ago I setup a GitLab box using Ubuntu Server. When I log in to the server it shows me a short message about available updates. The message looks something like this:
Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-24-generic x86_64) * Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/ 7 packages can be updated. 0 updates are security updates.
I know that I can update these packages by running `sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade` however, I’d like to know what I’m updating before I do it. In the past you could accomplish this by performing a “dry-run” of the command. This essentially showed you the output of the command without actually performing any updates. That worked alright – but honestly, I just want a list of the packages – not the entire output of the command.
Listing the Upgradable Packages
I stumbled upon this answer (made just a few days ago) by AskUbuntu user “doru“. Turns out that getting a list of updatable/upgradable packages is pretty easy. You just run this:
sudo apt list --upgradable
The list --upgradable command will list out all the packages that you can update, what their current versions are, and what the new version is. Boom! That’s exactly what I wanted.