Too many ways to reach the available updates report leads to confusion

I confirm this bug, able to reproduce in 7.x-dev as well. Attached patch makes changes to lists only required updates as below.

1. Modules updates only in admin/modules/update
2. Themes updates only in admin/appearance/update
3. Modules, themes and core in admin/reports/updates/update

Oops forgot to attach patch in #1.

The issue is still there in d7-dev, and d8 judging by the code. I tested this issue in d7 and the patch is working. I also noticed that the "Manual updates required" section was visible in modules and theme update pages. After the patch this section is no more visible. The drupal core update status is then only shown in admin/reports/updates page.

I think not having this "manual update" section in module and theme is good. So if this is right there will be a little cleanup needed

Here is the same patch as #2 for d7 and d8 with only the trailing space removed ( they are exactly the same ). I also attached a patch with the "Manual updates required" section removed.

...

let's try again but without messing with the last line this time.

That's not a bug. That's by design. The update report shows you everything you need to worry about updating. If you want to argue we have a bug, it's that we have 3 different ways to get to the same report. But, we're not going to intentionally hide info about modules that are missing updates if you got to the report via the theme/appearance links. These aren't meant to be separate reports. Just separate ways to reach the same report.

Also, the results of these comparisons are cached in interesting ways that I believe these patches would break. So, if we wanted to go down this road, we'd need to be careful we weren't screwing up the results by only selectively computing what's going on.

Finally, we can't just remove the "Manual updates required" section of the report until #606592: Allow updating core with the update manager (at least) is done.

Perhaps this is not a good design. See the snapshot attached to issue body (http://drupal.org/files/issues/appearance.png). The page title and breadcrumb reads as "Appearance" but the update offered is for views module which is not saner. At least there need to be a separate table for modules and themes updates.

Here are some options that I can see to solve this problem:

1. Redirect all "update" tabs to admin/reports/updates. But this would break consistency since it's not the expected behavior for a tab.
2. Remove the update tab from themes and modules list.
3. Filter the result of these reports to only show relevant information in their context (like in previous patch)
4. For example, consider the "theme" and "core" update as complementary information in the modules updates. Make them look less 'important' than the relevant information or maybe add a heading.

The solution #2 is maybe a good choice. After all there is already a warning message with a link pointing to the main update report if there is an update available. And do we really need 3 different places to show this report?

I'll be the first to admit having 3 ways to get to the same report is a bit confusing. However...

You're missing the point of this functionality. The actual thing people are trying to do when viewing these reports is to make sure their site is up to date, not running known security vulnerabilities, etc. It makes absolutely no sense to hide missing security updates for modules just because you happen to have found the report via the theme page. It'd be a horrible, critical bug if a report said "Everything up to date" just because your theme hasn't been updated, meanwhile you're running modules with known security vulnerabilities.

So, to the extent there's a bug here, it's the confusing IA with 3 different entry points to the same report. I'd be willing to reconsider #2, but I'll stubbornly refuse to even contemplate #3 or #4, and #1 is never going to fly from a UX perspective. So, we need to consider the IA and how to make it easy for people to find this report without getting confused about what it's for.

Closing as outdated. #11 makes a strong argument that this isn't a bug at all, and there hasn't been any discussion in the past 5 years. Feel free to re-open if there is an actionable change to address.