Comment # 17 on bug 984778 from Tony Mechelynck

Michael: You said in comment #3 "Keep it open as an RFE". Now the bug has been
closed becaused openSUSE 42.1 is at EOL. Do you want to REOPEN it for 42.3 (or
for Factory) as an RFE?

In the meantime, adding "-t patch -t package" (or vice-versa) on the
command-lines for "zypper lu" and "zypper up" looks to me like a satisfactory
solution. However, unlike "zypper patch", "zypper up -t patch -t package"
simply skips packages for which there is a conflict, rather than asking the
user what to do. I suppose this is intentional. What I do is: if "zypper lu -t
package -t patch" reports that a patch needs to be installed but that no
package can be upgraded, then I run "zypper patch" to see what the conflict is
(so I can report the problem to the appropriate developers and/or to
Maintenance).