APPSTREAMCLI(1) appstreamcli APPSTREAMCLI(1)
NAME
appstreamcli - Handle AppStream metadata formats and query AppStream
data
SYNOPSIS
appstreamcli [COMMAND]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents briefly the appstreamcli command.
appstreamcli is a small helper tool to work with AppStream metadata and
access the AppStream component index from the command-line. The
AppStream component index contains a list of all available software
components for your distribution, matched to their package names. It is
generated using AppStream XML or Debian DEP-11 data, which is provided
by your distributor.
For more information about the AppStream project and the other
components which are part of it, take a look at the AppStream pages at
Freedesktop.org[1].
OPTIONS
get ID
Get a component from the metadata pool by its identifier.
s, search TERM
Search the AppStream component pool for a given search term.
what-provides TYPE TERM
Return components which provide a given item. An item type can be
specified using the TYPE parameter, a value to search for has to be
supplied using the TERM parameter.
Examples:
Get components which handle the "text/xml" mediatype.
appstreamcli what-provides mediatype "text/xml"
Get component which provides the "libfoo.so.2" library.
appstreamcli what-provides lib libfoo.so.2
refresh, refresh-cache
Trigger a database refresh, if necessary. In case you want to force
the database to be rebuilt, supply the --force flag.
This command must be executed with root permission.
status
Display various information about the installed metadata and the
metadata cache.
os-info
Show information about the current operating system from the
metadata index. This requires the operating system to provide a
operating-system component for itself.
dump ID
Dump the complete XML descriptions of components with the given ID
that were found in the metadata pool.
validate FILES
Validate AppStream XML metadata for compliance with the
specification.
Both XML metadata types, upstream and distro XML, are handled. The
format type which should be validated is determined automatically.
The --pedantic flag triggers a more pedantic validation of the
file, including minor and style issues in the report.
validate-tree DIRECTORY
Validate AppStream XML metadata found in a file-tree.
This performs a standard validation of all found metadata, but also
checks for additional errors, like the presence of .desktop files
and validity of other additional metadata.
check-license LICENSE
Test a license string or license expression for validity and
display details about it.
This will check whether the license string is considered to be
valid for AppStream, and return a non-zero exit code if it is not.
The command will also display useful information like the canonical
ID of a license, whether it is suitable as license for AppStream
metadata, and whether the license is considered to be for Free and
Open Source software or proprietary software.
AppStream will consider any license as Free and Open Source that is
marked as suitable by either the Free Software Foundation (FSF),
Open Source Initiative (OSI) or explicit license list of the Debian
Free Software Guidelines (DFSG).
install ID
Install a software component by its ID using the package manager or
Flatpak.
This resolves the AppStream component ID to an installation
candidate and then calls either the native package manager or
Flatpak (if available) to install the component.
remove ID
Uninstall a software component by its ID using the package manager
or Flatpak.
This will uninstall software matching the selected ID using either
the native package manager or Flatpak (if available).
put FILE
Install a metadata file into the right directory on the current
machine.
compare-versions, vercmp VER1 [CMP] VER2
Compare two version numbers. If two version numbers are given as
parameters, the versions will be compared and the comparison result
will be printed to stdout.
If a version number, a comparison operator and another version
number are passed in as parameter, the result of the comparison
operation will be printed to stdout, and appstreamcli will exit
with a non-zero exit status in case the comparison failed. The
comparison operator can be one of the following:
• eq - Equal to
• ne - Not equal to
• lt - Less than
• gt - Greater than
• le - Less than or equal to
• ge - Greater than or equal to
new-template TYPE FILE
Create a metainfo file template to be used by software projects.
The --from-desktop option can be used to use a .desktop file as
template for generating the example file.
The generated files contain example entries which need to be filed
in with the actual desired values by the project author.
The first TYPE parameter is the name of an AppStream component
type. For a complete list check out the documentation[2] or the
help output of appstreamcli for this subcommand.
make-desktop-file MI_FILE DESKTOP_FILE
Create a XDG desktop-entry file from a metainfo file. If the
desktop-entry file specified in DESKTOP_FILE already exists, it
will get extended with the new information extracted from the
metainfo file. Otherwise a new file will be created.
This command will use the first binary mentioned in a provides tag
of the component for the Exec= field of the new desktop-entry file.
If this is not the desired behavior, the --exec flag can be used to
explicitly define a binary to launch. Other methods of launching
the application are currently not supported.
In order to generate a proper desktop-entry, this command assumes
that not only the minimally required tags for an AppStream
component are set, but also that it has an <icon/> tag of type
"stock" to describe the stock icon that should be used as well as a
<categories/> tag containing the categories the application should
be placed in.
news-to-metainfo NEWS_FILE MI_FILE [OUT_FILE]
This command converts a NEWS file as used by many open source
projects into the XML used by AppStream. Since NEWS files are free
text, a lot of heuristics will be applied to get reasonable
results. The converter can also read a YAML version of the
AppStream release description and convert it to XML as well. If the
metainfo file MI_FILE already exists, it will be augmented with the
new release entries, otherwise the release entries will be written
without any wrapping component. If [OUT_FILE] is specified, instead
of acting on MI_FILE the changed data will be written to the
particular file. If any of the output filenames is set to "-", the
output will instead be written to stdout.
The --format option can be used to enforce reading the input file
in a specific format ("text" or "yaml") in case the format
autodetection fails. The --limit option is used to limit the amount
of release entries written (the newest entries will always be
first).
metainfo-to-news MI_FILE NEWS_FILE
This command reverses the news-to-metainfo command and writes a
NEWS file as text or YAML using the XML contained in a metainfo
file. If NEWS_FILE is set to "-", the resulting data will be
written to stdout instead of to a file.
The --format option can be used to explicitly specify the output
format ("yaml" or "text"). If it is not set, appstreamcli will
guess which format is most suitable.
convert FILE1 FILE1
Converts AppStream XML metadata into its YAML representation and
vice versa.
compose
Composes an AppStream metadata catalog from a directory tree with
metainfo files. This command is only available if the
org.freedesktop.appstream.compose component is installed. See
appstreamcli-compose(1) for more information.
--details
Print out more information about a found component.
--no-color
Don't print colored output.
--no-net
Do not access the network when validating metadata.
The same effect can be achieved by setting the AS_VALIDATE_NONET
environment variable before running appstreamcli.
--version
Display the version number of appstreamcli
SEE ALSO
pkcon(1).
AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Matthias Klumpp
<matthias@tenstral.net>.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2012-2022 Matthias Klumpp
NOTES
1. Freedesktop.org
https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Distributions/AppStream/
2. the documentation
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Metadata.html
AppStream APPSTREAMCLI(1)
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