# appstream-cli

appstream-generator

1

&package;

Generate AppStream metadata from distribution repositories

    		       &package;

    			       COMMAND

## Description

This manual page documents briefly the `&package;` command.

`&package;` generates AppStream metadata from the repositories of a software distribution. It currently supports the following repository formats / distributions: Debian, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, RPM-MD (Fedora, Mageia).

The generator will produce AppStream collection metadata files in the AppStream YAML or XML format to be shipped to users, as well as a detailed HTML report about found components and HTML and JSON reports on issues detected with the scanned metadata. It reads .desktop files as well as metainfo files, renders fonts, scales images, caches screenshots etc. to produce high-quality metadata for AppStream based software centers to consume. Usually, `&package;` is integrated with the existing software build & delivery workflow of a distribution.

The `&package;` tool is based on the `libappstream` library for metadata conversion and analysis. If you just want to embed AppStream metadata processing into another tool, using `libappstream` is likely a better choice. The generator tool does some heavy lifting like rendering fonts and scaling images, which might not be necessary for simple cases.

To use `&package;`, a `asgen-config.json` file is required. Its format is described in detail in the asgen-config.json documentation.

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.

## Options

`process `SUITE``

- Process new metadata for the given distribution suite.

`cleanup`

- Cleanup old/expired metadata and media files from the cache and directories.

`remove-found `SUITE``

- Drop all valid processed metadata and hints from the selected suite.

`forget `PKID``

- Drop all information we have about this (partial) package-id.

  A package-id consists of a `name/version/arch` triplet. For this command, the version and architecture can be omitted.

`info `PKID``

- Show information associated with this (full) package-id.

  A package-id consists of a `name/version/arch` triplet.

`-w|--workspace`

- Define the workspace location.

  If this flag is omitted, the current directory is assumed as the workspace location.

`--force`

- Enforce the command.

`--verbose`

- Show extra debugging information.

`--version`

- Display the version number of &package;.

## See Also

appstreamcli (1).

## AUTHOR

This manual page was written by Matthias Klumpp matthias@tenstral.net.