1APPSTREAMCLI(1) appstreamcli APPSTREAMCLI(1)
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6 appstreamcli - Handle AppStream metadata formats and query AppStream
7 data
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10 appstreamcli [COMMAND]
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13 This manual page documents briefly the appstreamcli command.
14 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 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
27 status
28 Display various information about the installed metadata and the
29 metadata cache.
30 get ID
32 Get a component by it's identifier.
33 s, search TERM
35 Search the AppStream component database for a given search term.
36 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 Examples:
43 Get components which handle the "text/xml" mediatype.
45 appstreamcli what-provides mediatype "text/xml"
47 Get component which provides the "libfoo.so.2" library.
49 appstreamcli what-provides lib libfoo.so.2
51 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 This command must be executed with root permission.
57 dump ID
59 Dump the XML description of a component with the given ID.
60 validate FILES
62 Validate AppStream XML metadata for compliance with the
63 specification.
64 Both XML metadata types, upstream and distro XML, are handled. The
66 filetype which should be validated is determined automatically.
67 The --pedantic flag triggers a more pedantic validation of the
69 file, including minor and style issues in the report.
70 validate-tree DIRECTORY
72 Validate AppStream XML metadata found in a file-tree.
73 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 check-license LICENSE
79 Test a license string for validity and display details about it.
80 This will check whether the license string is considered to be
82 valid for AppStream, and return a non-zero exit code if it is not.
83 The command will also display useful information like the canonical
84 ID of a license, whether it is suitable as license for AppStream
85 metadata, and whether the license is considered to be for Free and
86 Open Source software or proprietary software.
87 AppStream will consider any license as Free and Open Source that is
89 marked as suitable by either the Free Software Foundation (FSF),
90 Open Source Initiative (OSI) or explicit license list of the Debian
91 Free Software Guidelines (DFSG).
92 install ID
94 Install a software component by its ID.
95 This resolves the AppStream component ID to the package name which
97 provides it and then calls the distribution's package manager to
98 install the software.
99 This feature is experimental.
101 put FILE
103 Install a metadata file into the right directory on the current
104 machine.
105 compare-versions VER1 [CMP] VER2
107 Compare two version numbers. If two version numbers are given as
108 parameters, the versions will be compared and the comparison result
109 will be printed to stdout.
110 If a version number, a comparison operator and another version
112 number are passed in as parameter, the result of the comparison
113 operation will be printed to stdout, and appstreamcli will exit
114 with a non-zero exit status in case the comparison failed. The
115 comparison operator can be one of the following:
116 • eq - Equal to
118 • ne - Not equal to
120 • lt - Lesser than
122 • gt - Greater than
124 • le - Lesser than or equal to
126 • ge - Greater than or equal to
128 new-template TYPE FILE
130 Create a metainfo file template to be used by software projects.
131 The --from-desktop option can be used to use a .desktop file as
132 template for generating the example file.
133 The generated files contain example entries which need to be filed
135 in with the actual desired values by the project author.
136 The first TYPE parameter is the name of an AppStream component
138 type. For a complete list check out the documentation[2] or the
139 help output of appstreamcli for this subcommand.
140 make-desktop-file MI_FILE DESKTOP_FILE
142 Create a XDG desktop-entry file from a metainfo file. If the
143 desktop-entry file specified in DESKTOP_FILE already exists, it
144 will get extended with the new information extracted from the
145 metainfo file. Otherwise a new file will be created.
146 This command will use the first binary mentioned in a provides tag
148 of the component for the Exec= field of the new desktop-entry file.
149 If this is not the desired behavior, the --exec flag can be used to
150 explicitly define a binary to launch. Other methods of launching
151 the application are currently not supported.
152 In order to generate a proper desktop-entry, this command assumes
154 that not only the minimally required tags for an AppStream
155 component are set, but also that it has an <icon/> tag of type
156 "stock" to describe the stock icon that should be used as well as a
157 <categories/> tag containing the categories the application should
158 be placed in.
159 news-to-metainfo NEWS_FILE MI_FILE [OUT_FILE]
161 This command converts a NEWS file as used by many open source
162 projects into the XML used by AppStream. Since NEWS files are free
163 text, a lot of heuristics will be applied to get reasonable
164 results. The converter can also read a YAML version of the
165 AppStream release description and convert it to XML as well. If the
166 metainfo file MI_FILE already exists, it will be augmented with the
167 new release entries, otherwise the release entries will be written
168 without any wrapping component. If [OUT_FILE] is specified, instead
169 of acting on MI_FILE the changed data will be written to the
170 particular file. If any of the output filenames is set to "-", the
171 output will instead be written to stdout.
172 The --format option can be used to enforce reading the input file
174 in a specific format ("text" or "yaml") in case the format
175 autodetection fails. The --limit option is used to limit the amount
176 of release entries written (the newest entries will always be
177 first).
178 metainfo-to-news MI_FILE NEWS_FILE
180 This command reverses the news-to-metainfo command and writes a
181 NEWS file as text or YAML using the XML contained in a metainfo
182 file. If NEWS_FILE is set to "-", the resulting data will be
183 written to stdout instead of to a file.
184 The --format option can be used to explicitly specify the output
186 format ("yaml" or "text"). If it is not set, appstreamcli will
187 guess which format is most suitable.
188 --details
190 Print out more information about a found component.
191 --no-color
193 Don't print colored output.
194 --no-net
196 Do not access the network when validating metadata.
197 The same effect can be achieved by setting the AS_VALIDATE_NONET
199 environment variable before running appstreamcli.
200 --version
202 Display the version number of appstreamcli
203
205 pkcon (1).
206
208 This manual page was written by Matthias Klumpp
209 <matthias@tenstral.net>.
210
212 Copyright © 2012-2021 Matthias Klumpp
213
215 1. Freedesktop.org
216 https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Distributions/AppStream/
217 2. the documentation
219 https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Metadata.html
220AppStream APPSTREAMCLI(1)