APPSTREAMCLI

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 m[blue]Freedesktop.orgm[][1].  

OPTIONS

status

Display various information about the installed metadata and the metadata cache.

get ID

Get a component by it's identifier.

s, search TERM

Search the AppStream component database 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.

dump ID

Dump the XML description of a component with the given ID.

validate FILES

Validate AppStream XML metadata for compliance with the specification.

Both XML metadata types, upstream and distro XML, are handled. The filetype 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.

install ID

Install a software component by its ID.

This resolves the AppStream component ID to the package name which provides it and then calls the distribution's package manager to install the software.

This feature is experimental.

put FILE

Install a metadata file into the right directory on the current machine.

compare-versions 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 - Lesser than

• gt - Greater than

• le - Lesser 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 m[blue]the documentationm[][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.

--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

NOTES

1.

Freedesktop.org

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Distributions/AppStream/

2.

the documentation

https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Metadata.html