<provides/>
tag, distributors must also ensure that the package providing the file contain all items referenced by that statement, or is installed by a metapackage depending on packages which provide these items. This gives upstream projects a (very light) way to influence distributor packaging. More information about that can be found below.
/usr/share/appdata/%{id}.metainfo.xml
, where id
is a unique identifier of this specific component.
Note
/usr/share/appdata/%{id}.appdata.xml
.
/usr/share/appdata/symbols
directory is reserved for a possible future use for storing upstream-generated symbols files for libraries.
Multiarch Support
appstream.metainfo.xml
becomes appstream_x86_64-linux-gnu.metainfo.xml
. Upstream projects which ship components with libraries should adjust their buildsystem to install a multi-arch compatible metainfo file by default. Make use of the <architectures/>
tag to indicate that the meta-info file is arch specific.
<component>
tag as root element. The <component>
element must at least have an id
, name
and releases
tag, a provides
tag with appropriate children is highly recommended. All possible tags in the generic set are:
<id>
tag is a short and unique identifier for this component. It must contain only ASCII caracters, dots, hyphens and numbers, spaces are not allowed. Specialized metainfo types, such as application or fonts, may apply additional restrictions on the id
tag value.
homepage
should be a link to the upstream homepage for the component.
bugtracker
should point to the software's bug tracking system, for users to report new bugs.
faq
should link a FAQ page for this software, to answer some of the most-asked questions in detail, something which you can not do in the component's description.
donation
should point to a webpage showing information on how to donate to the described software project.
<releases>
tag contains <release/>
child tags which describe some metainformation about the current release of the described software. The <release/>
tag may be present multiple times (for older releases), but a tag for the current version must always be present. A release
tag can have the properties version
and timestamp
which contain the version number and a release timestamp in form of YYYYMMDD.
<releases> <release version="1.2" timestamp="20140412" /> <release version="1.0" timestamp="20120826" /> </releases>
provides
tag and it's children describe the public interfaces this application provides. A public interface can be anything which other applications, which are not part of the upstream project, can access or reference. This includes binaries and libraries. Private interfaces should never be added to a provides
tag.
provides
tag contain a number of childrens describing the type and name of the provided public interface items. It is suggested that the build-system auto-generates this tag and it's children. Currently allowed item types are listed below. If you miss something, file a bug against AppStream so we can add the new type.
/usr/lib
, /usr/lib/<triplet>
or /lib
. For example, for the libappstream library, the value for library
would be libappstream.so.1
.
PATH
.
Linux Libertine O
. The tag must have a file
property stating the filename of the referenced font.
<provides> <font file="LinLibertine_R.otf">Linux Libertine O</font> </provides>
<provides> <firmware>ipw2200-bss.fw</firmware> </provides>
<project_group/>
tag then this identifies your project with a specific upstream umbrella project. Known values include GNOME, KDE, XFCE, MATE and LXDE, although other umbrella projects like Yorba or Mozilla make sense too.
Note
<metadata_license/>
tag is indicating the content licence that you are releasing the one Metainfo XML file as. This is not typically the same as the project licence. By ommitting the licence value would probably mean your data would not be incorporated into the distribution metadata (so this is a required tag). Permissible licence codes include:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <component> <id>foobar</id> <name>Foo Bar</name> <summary>A foo-ish bar</summary> <url type="homepage">http://www.example.org</url> <metadata_license>CC0</metadata_license> <provides> <library>libfoobar.so.2</library> <font>foo.ttf</font> <binary>foobar</binary> </provides> <release version="1.2" timestamp="1365768000" /> </component>