Regarding sa-update, EXIT CODES An exit code of 0 means an update was available, and was downloaded and installed successfully if --checkonly was not specified.
An exit code of 1 means no fresh updates were available. I would make this: 0 means you are all up to date. The connection was made, and if something was needed it was download. Anyways you are now all up to date. This would then not stop Makefiles that call it, nor would one need to do case $? in 0|1)...; esac.