[arch-general] improving the app stream data

[Antonio Rojas]

kendell clark wrote:
> hi all
> I'm writing in to ask how I can help arch improve it's app stream
> data, which is largely what gnome software depends on to be able to
> install and find software. As it stands now there are a lot of
> packages missing data, so you often get "no application found" when
> using gnome software to search for them. A good example is orca, the
> screen reader. Another issue is using gnome software to find software
> for mime types the system doesn't know how to handle. Often you'll get
> sorry we couldn't find any software to handle this mime type, when
> software does exist. Does anyone know how the app stream system works
> and can you point me to docs and standards so I can read up on it?
> Once I've got that down, where can I pull down the source appstream
> data arch uses so I can start improving it? I've got the
> archlinux-appstream package installed, but I'm not sure if I can edit
> the data with a running package and it will be picked up automatically
> or if I need to edit the data and then generate a new package. Sorry
> for my ignorance I'm completely new at all of this stuff. Any help
> would be greatly appreciated.
> Thanks for reading
> Kendell clark

Hi,
 Appstream data is provided by applications themselves, in xml files which 
are installed in /usr/share/appdata/. Then the system-wide database is 
generated with the appstream-builder application (from the appstream-glib 
package), which parses all these xml files (and I *think* it also does some 
basic .desktop file parsing for applications that don't provide appdata 
files). I usually run the builder after major KDE/GNOME updates to pick up 
new application data. 
 So if you want to improve appstream data, you should really work on 
improving upstream appdata files. Check which applications are missing them, 
check if they are really missing upstream or just not being packaged, and 
file bugs or submit appdata files upstream as needed.