I believe there is an existing bug report about apport regarding this matter but I didn't find it immediately. That being said bug 1050569 is about the same issue, apt information not being up to date, and has comment from Martin Pitt about why he doesn't want to run apt-get update when filing a bug report. Although maybe with changes to apt somewhat documented in bug 1686470 there is a way to check if the system has had 'apt-get update' run one time. If that's true than apport could only run apt-get update if it has never been run.
** Summary changed: - Unable to report gnome-shell bugs prior to the first software update (claims gnome-shell is not an official ubuntu package) + Unable to use apport to report any bugs prior to the first software update -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Desktop Bugs, which is subscribed to gnome-shell in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1697146 Title: Unable to use apport to report any bugs prior to the first software update To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apport/+bug/1697146/+subscriptions -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs