Provided by: appstream_0.12.10-2_amd64 
NAME
appstreamcli - Handle AppStream metadata formats and query AppStream data
SYNOPSIS
appstreamcli [COMMAND]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents briefly the appstreamcli command.
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 Freedesktop.org[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.
The --explain flag can be used to show more information and an explanation of the individual issue
tag.
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
the documentation[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
Copyright © 2012-2020 Matthias Klumpp
NOTES
1. Freedesktop.org
https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Distributions/AppStream/
2. the documentation
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Metadata.html