basic update

Apt's "update" command updates records of what packages are available from the configured repositories. So I would assume that it's done exactly what it's meant to do.

As a side note, these days you can drop the '-get' when using interactively. Whilst 'apt-get' still exists and works, that is now used programatically now, with 'apt' being the more user-friendly end user tool.

Back to your problem/question at hand, are you trying to download and install the latest available packages (for the release?

If so, then "upgrade" is the command you are looking for. FWIW, after running 'update' (as you already have) then you can check what upgradable packages are available like this:

apt list --upgradeable

And assuming that you are ok to install them all:

apt upgrade

Yes, that means that all of the packages from the configured repositories are up to date. Note that security updates are auto installed nightly, so if you've run 'apt upgrade" relatively recently, it's not uncommon for no updates to be available. Non-security Debian updates are generally rolled out in bulk in a "point release", roughly every 2 months.

Please note though, that Leantime itself is not packaged. To update that piece of software, you will need to follow the upstream instructions. Unfortunately, they aren't very verbose, so if that's what you are hoping to do, then let me know and I'll write up instructions on how to do that.

I get nothing back..

just didn't want to get left behind on updates, normally there is something, maybe a log4j update maybe (although I have read it's not installed by default and I have checked.) (I did say something like...)

do I assume I'm in good shape?

root@leantime ~# apt upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
root@leantime ~# apt list --upgradeable
Listing... Done