Comment # 13 on bug 984778 from Tony Mechelynck

(In reply to Michael Andres from comment #12)
> JFYI: zypper-1.13.24 supports 'zypper patch --with-update' which will
> perform a combination of 'patch' and 'up'. This includes suppressing any
> package updates, if patches for the updatestack need to be applied first.

JFYI: the current zypper version on Leap 42.2 (even with the Update-Test repo
enabled) is 1.13.21. I hope the update will appear soon, but in the meantime
I'm still explicitly specifying "-t patch -t package" to both "zypper lu" and
"zypper up", and I usually notice dependency conflicts (of the kind you
mentioned below) by the fact that a "needed" patch is silently not applied, or
only partly, and reappears as "needed" the next time I check for updates (cf.
bug 1034010).
> 
> 
> @'zypper up including patches': not per default, because patch installation
> may raise dependency conflicts, which is not wanted in plain 'zupper up'.

Ah, OK.