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]
11
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 get ID
28 Get a component from the metadata pool by its identifier.
29 s, search TERM
31 Search the AppStream component pool for a given search term.
32 what-provides TYPE TERM
34 Return components which provide a given item. An item type can be
35 specified using the TYPE parameter, a value to search for has to be
36 supplied using the TERM parameter.
37 Examples:
39 Get components which handle the "text/xml" mediatype.
41 appstreamcli what-provides mediatype "text/xml"
43 Get component which provides the "libfoo.so.2" library.
45 appstreamcli what-provides lib libfoo.so.2
47 refresh, refresh-cache
49 Trigger a database refresh, if necessary. In case you want to force
50 the database to be rebuilt, supply the --force flag.
51 This command must be executed with root permission.
53 status
55 Display various information about the installed metadata and the
56 metadata cache.
57 os-info
59 Show information about the current operating system from the
60 metadata index. This requires the operating system to provide a
61 operating-system component for itself.
62 dump ID
64 Dump the complete XML descriptions of components with the given ID
65 that were found in the metadata pool.
66 validate FILES
68 Validate AppStream XML metadata for compliance with the
69 specification.
70 Both XML metadata types, upstream and distro XML, are handled. The
72 format type which should be validated is determined automatically.
73 The --pedantic flag triggers a more pedantic validation of the
75 file, including minor and style issues in the report.
76 validate-tree DIRECTORY
78 Validate AppStream XML metadata found in a file-tree.
79 This performs a standard validation of all found metadata, but also
81 checks for additional errors, like the presence of .desktop files
82 and validity of other additional metadata.
83 check-license LICENSE
85 Test a license string or license expression for validity and
86 display details about it.
87 This will check whether the license string is considered to be
89 valid for AppStream, and return a non-zero exit code if it is not.
90 The command will also display useful information like the canonical
91 ID of a license, whether it is suitable as license for AppStream
92 metadata, and whether the license is considered to be for Free and
93 Open Source software or proprietary software.
94 AppStream will consider any license as Free and Open Source that is
96 marked as suitable by either the Free Software Foundation (FSF),
97 Open Source Initiative (OSI) or explicit license list of the Debian
98 Free Software Guidelines (DFSG).
99 install ID
101 Install a software component by its ID using the package manager or
102 Flatpak.
103 This resolves the AppStream component ID to an installation
105 candidate and then calls either the native package manager or
106 Flatpak (if available) to install the component.
107 remove ID
109 Uninstall a software component by its ID using the package manager
110 or Flatpak.
111 This will uninstall software matching the selected ID using either
113 the native package manager or Flatpak (if available).
114 put FILE
116 Install a metadata file into the right directory on the current
117 machine.
118 compare-versions, vercmp VER1 [CMP] VER2
120 Compare two version numbers. If two version numbers are given as
121 parameters, the versions will be compared and the comparison result
122 will be printed to stdout.
123 If a version number, a comparison operator and another version
125 number are passed in as parameter, the result of the comparison
126 operation will be printed to stdout, and appstreamcli will exit
127 with a non-zero exit status in case the comparison failed. The
128 comparison operator can be one of the following:
129 • eq - Equal to
131 • ne - Not equal to
133 • lt - Less than
135 • gt - Greater than
137 • le - Less than or equal to
139 • ge - Greater than or equal to
141 new-template TYPE FILE
143 Create a metainfo file template to be used by software projects.
144 The --from-desktop option can be used to use a .desktop file as
145 template for generating the example file.
146 The generated files contain example entries which need to be filed
148 in with the actual desired values by the project author.
149 The first TYPE parameter is the name of an AppStream component
151 type. For a complete list check out the documentation[2] or the
152 help output of appstreamcli for this subcommand.
153 make-desktop-file MI_FILE DESKTOP_FILE
155 Create a XDG desktop-entry file from a metainfo file. If the
156 desktop-entry file specified in DESKTOP_FILE already exists, it
157 will get extended with the new information extracted from the
158 metainfo file. Otherwise a new file will be created.
159 This command will use the first binary mentioned in a provides tag
161 of the component for the Exec= field of the new desktop-entry file.
162 If this is not the desired behavior, the --exec flag can be used to
163 explicitly define a binary to launch. Other methods of launching
164 the application are currently not supported.
165 In order to generate a proper desktop-entry, this command assumes
167 that not only the minimally required tags for an AppStream
168 component are set, but also that it has an <icon/> tag of type
169 "stock" to describe the stock icon that should be used as well as a
170 <categories/> tag containing the categories the application should
171 be placed in.
172 news-to-metainfo NEWS_FILE MI_FILE [OUT_FILE]
174 This command converts a NEWS file as used by many open source
175 projects into the XML used by AppStream. Since NEWS files are free
176 text, a lot of heuristics will be applied to get reasonable
177 results. The converter can also read a YAML version of the
178 AppStream release description and convert it to XML as well. If the
179 metainfo file MI_FILE already exists, it will be augmented with the
180 new release entries, otherwise the release entries will be written
181 without any wrapping component. If [OUT_FILE] is specified, instead
182 of acting on MI_FILE the changed data will be written to the
183 particular file. If any of the output filenames is set to "-", the
184 output will instead be written to stdout.
185 The --format option can be used to enforce reading the input file
187 in a specific format ("text" or "yaml") in case the format
188 autodetection fails. The --limit option is used to limit the amount
189 of release entries written (the newest entries will always be
190 first).
191 metainfo-to-news MI_FILE NEWS_FILE
193 This command reverses the news-to-metainfo command and writes a
194 NEWS file as text or YAML using the XML contained in a metainfo
195 file. If NEWS_FILE is set to "-", the resulting data will be
196 written to stdout instead of to a file.
197 The --format option can be used to explicitly specify the output
199 format ("yaml" or "text"). If it is not set, appstreamcli will
200 guess which format is most suitable.
201 convert FILE1 FILE1
203 Converts AppStream XML metadata into its YAML representation and
204 vice versa.
205 compose
207 Composes an AppStream metadata catalog from a directory tree with
208 metainfo files. This command is only available if the
209 org.freedesktop.appstream.compose component is installed. See
210 appstreamcli-compose(1) for more information.
211 --details
213 Print out more information about a found component.
214 --no-color
216 Don't print colored output.
217 --no-net
219 Do not access the network when validating metadata.
220 The same effect can be achieved by setting the AS_VALIDATE_NONET
222 environment variable before running appstreamcli.
223 --version
225 Display the version number of appstreamcli
226
228 pkcon(1).
229
231 This manual page was written by Matthias Klumpp
232 <matthias@tenstral.net>.
233
235 Copyright © 2012-2022 Matthias Klumpp
236
238 1. Freedesktop.org
239 https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Distributions/AppStream/
240 2. the documentation
242 https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Metadata.html
243AppStream APPSTREAMCLI(1)