How can I test the new 'recent' feature in Files?

Question

As Daniel Foré announced in this post on Google+, a new 'Recent' view has been added to Files, at least in the daily ppa, but though I do run daily on my system, this update never showed up for me. How can I troubleshoot this issue?

Answer 1

First, we can check which version of Files you currently have (and where you're getting it from) with the following Terminal command:

apt-cache policy pantheon-files

You should see some information like the version you have installed, the version that's available to be installed, and versions that are available from your various software sources.

We can see here in Launchpad that the Recent feature was merged in at revision 1892. As of this writing, the version available in the daily PPA is revision 1922. You can see this inside the version string. First it contains the milestone version 0.2.2.1 then it says +r1922 which refers to the revision number in bzr.

If you saw that Files is available from the daily PPA when you ran apt-cache, but it was a previous revision number you can try updating your software sources with the following command:

sudo apt update

If you didn't see the daily PPA in your sources, you might want to make sure you have actually added it. Be warned that this is an unstable software source and it is intended for developers. You may experience breakage by using it. You can use the following commands to add it and refresh your software sources:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elementary-os/daily
sudo apt update

At this point, you should definitely see the latest revision of Files available from the Daily PPA when you run apt-cache with the above arguments. You can update through either the regular Software Updater app or with the following command:

sudo apt upgrade