1APPSTREAMCLI(1)                  appstreamcli                  APPSTREAMCLI(1)
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3
4

NAME

6       appstreamcli - Handle AppStream metadata formats and query AppStream
7       data
8

SYNOPSIS

10       appstreamcli [COMMAND]
11

DESCRIPTION

13       This manual page documents briefly the appstreamcli command.
14
15       appstreamcli is a small helper tool to work with AppStream metadata and
16       access the AppStream component index from the command-line. The
17       AppStream component index contains a list of all available software
18       components for your distribution, matched to their package names. It is
19       generated using AppStream XML or Debian DEP-11 data, which is provided
20       by your distributor.
21
22       For more information about the AppStream project and the other
23       components which are part of it, take a look at the AppStream pages at
24       Freedesktop.org[1].
25

OPTIONS

27       status
28           Display various information about the installed metadata and the
29           metadata cache.
30
31       get ID
32           Get a component by it's identifier.
33
34       s, search TERM
35           Search the AppStream component database for a given search term.
36
37       what-provides TYPE TERM
38           Return components which provide a given item. An item type can be
39           specified using the TYPE parameter, a value to search for has to be
40           supplied using the TERM parameter.
41
42           Examples:
43
44           Get components which handle the "text/xml" mediatype.
45
46           appstreamcli what-provides mediatype "text/xml"
47
48           Get component which provides the "libfoo.so.2" library.
49
50           appstreamcli what-provides lib libfoo.so.2
51
52       refresh, refresh-cache
53           Trigger a database refresh, if necessary. In case you want to force
54           the database to be rebuilt, supply the --force flag.
55
56           This command must be executed with root permission.
57
58       dump ID
59           Dump the XML description of a component with the given ID.
60
61       validate FILES
62           Validate AppStream XML metadata for compliance with the
63           specification.
64
65           Both XML metadata types, upstream and distro XML, are handled. The
66           filetype which should be validated is determined automatically.
67
68           The --pedantic flag triggers a more pedantic validation of the
69           file, including minor and style issues in the report.
70
71       validate-tree DIRECTORY
72           Validate AppStream XML metadata found in a file-tree.
73
74           This performs a standard validation of all found metadata, but also
75           checks for additional errors, like the presence of .desktop files
76           and validity of other additional metadata.
77
78       install ID
79           Install a software component by its ID.
80
81           This resolves the AppStream component ID to the package name which
82           provides it and then calls the distribution's package manager to
83           install the software.
84
85           This feature is experimental.
86
87       put FILE
88           Install a metadata file into the right directory on the current
89           machine.
90
91       compare-versions VER1 [CMP] VER2
92           Compare two version numbers. If two version numbers are given as
93           parameters, the versions will be compared and the comparison result
94           will be printed to stdout.
95
96           If a version number, a comparison operator and another version
97           number are passed in as parameter, the result of the comparison
98           operation will be printed to stdout, and appstreamcli will exit
99           with a non-zero exit status in case the comparison failed. The
100           comparison operator can be one of the following:
101
102           ·   eq - Equal to
103
104           ·   ne - Not equal to
105
106           ·   lt - Lesser than
107
108           ·   gt - Greater than
109
110           ·   le - Lesser than or equal to
111
112           ·   ge - Greater than or equal to
113
114       new-template TYPE FILE
115           Create a metainfo file template to be used by software projects.
116           The --from-desktop option can be used to use a .desktop file as
117           template for generating the example file.
118
119           The generated files contain example entries which need to be filed
120           in with the actual desired values by the project author.
121
122           The first TYPE parameter is the name of an AppStream component
123           type. For a complete list check out the documentation[2] or the
124           help output of appstreamcli for this subcommand.
125
126       make-desktop-file MI_FILE DESKTOP_FILE
127           Create a XDG desktop-entry file from a metainfo file. If the
128           desktop-entry file specified in DESKTOP_FILE already exists, it
129           will get extended with the new information extracted from the
130           metainfo file. Otherwise a new file will be created.
131
132           This command will use the first binary mentioned in a provides tag
133           of the component for the Exec= field of the new desktop-entry file.
134           If this is not the desired behavior, the --exec flag can be used to
135           explicitly define a binary to launch. Other methods of launching
136           the application are currently not supported.
137
138           In order to generate a proper desktop-entry, this command assumes
139           that not only the minimally required tags for an AppStream
140           component are set, but also that it has an <icon/> tag of type
141           "stock" to describe the stock icon that should be used as well as a
142           <categories/> tag containing the categories the application should
143           be placed in.
144
145       news-to-metainfo NEWS_FILE MI_FILE [OUT_FILE]
146           This command converts a NEWS file as used by many open source
147           projects into the XML used by AppStream. Since NEWS files are free
148           text, a lot of heuristics will be applied to get reasonable
149           results. The converter can also read a YAML version of the
150           AppStream release description and convert it to XML as well. If the
151           metainfo file MI_FILE already exists, it will be augmented with the
152           new release entries, otherwise the release entries will be written
153           without any wrapping component. If [OUT_FILE] is specified, instead
154           of acting on MI_FILE the changed data will be written to the
155           particular file. If any of the output filenames is set to "-", the
156           output will instead be written to stdout.
157
158           The --format option can be used to enforce reading the input file
159           in a specific format ("text" or "yaml") in case the format
160           autodetection fails. The --limit option is used to limit the amount
161           of release entries written (the newest entries will always be
162           first).
163
164       metainfo-to-news MI_FILE NEWS_FILE
165           This command reverses the news-to-metainfo command and writes a
166           NEWS file as text or YAML using the XML contained in a metainfo
167           file. If NEWS_FILE is set to "-", the resulting data will be
168           written to stdout instead of to a file.
169
170           The --format option can be used to explicitly specify the output
171           format ("yaml" or "text"). If it is not set, appstreamcli will
172           guess which format is most suitable.
173
174       --details
175           Print out more information about a found component.
176
177       --no-color
178           Don't print colored output.
179
180       --no-net
181           Do not access the network when validating metadata.
182
183           The same effect can be achieved by setting the AS_VALIDATE_NONET
184           environment variable before running appstreamcli.
185
186       --version
187           Display the version number of appstreamcli
188

SEE ALSO

190       pkcon (1).
191

AUTHOR

193       This manual page was written by Matthias Klumpp
194       <matthias@tenstral.net>.
195
197       Copyright © 2012-2020 Matthias Klumpp
198

NOTES

200        1. Freedesktop.org
201           https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Distributions/AppStream/
202
203        2. the documentation
204           https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Metadata.html
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206
207
208AppStream                                                      APPSTREAMCLI(1)
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