No option to refresh (or reload) the APT cash is visible

[Matt Sturgeon]

Binary package hint: software-center

Hi,
Using Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha 1 (and older) there appears to be no visible option (button or menu entry) to reload/refresh the APT cash - this option is only visible from a) the command line (sudo apt-get update), from within update-manager (for some reason gksudo is not necessary here, though sudo is needed for apt-get :-\), or from within synaptic.

The odd thing is - if I open software-center and update-manager, and then "check for updates" - software-center knows that the cash is being updated, and shows the progress, but an option to do so directly from within software-center appears non-existant.

Thanks

[Matt Sturgeon (mattsturgeon)]

This is also essential for the long-term plans to merge update-manager with software-center.

[IKT (ikt)]

I'm hoping this will have higher priority soon, I was quite excited about 11.10 until I realised after I had chosen my local mirror and clicked ok in the software sources I had to then open up terminal and do apt-get update...

A simple fix until the big update manager merge comes in could be to just put next to the download box a small 'update cache' button that simply runs sudo apt-get update, as that is all that would be required.

Such a small issue that hurts just how awesome the new USC is :(

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Thanks for the report, Matt, and sorry for the slow response.

There is nothing in this report that states why a visible control to update the apt cache would be useful or desirable. Adding a function to do that would be one possible solution to several problems, for example, bug 677076, bug 574155, and bug 782953. But it would be a poor solution, because most people would not understand that they needed to do it. Fortunately, in each case, it is possible for Ubuntu to be smart enough to update the cache automatically, so a function to do it manually is not necessary.