APPSTREAM-GENERATOR(1)

✨ APPSTREAM-GENERATOR ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the manual page for appstream-generator — the appstream-generator command from appstream-generator(1), and yes we're doing this whole thing together, grab a boba 🧋

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🌸 NAME 🌸

appstream-generator — generate AppStream metadata from distribution repositories 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

appstream-generator [COMMAND]

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

This manual page gives you the quick lil rundown of the appstream-generator command, fr fr.

appstream-generator generates AppStream metadata out of the repositories of a software distribution. Right now it supports these repository formats / distributions, no cap:

• Debian
• Ubuntu
• Arch Linux
• RPM-MD (Fedora, Mageia)

The generator produces AppStream catalog metadata files in the AppStream YAML or XML format, which get shipped out to users, PLUS detailed HTML reports about the components it found, and both HTML and JSON reports on any issues it hit while compiling that metadata. It reads .desktop files and metainfo files, renders fonts, scales images, caches screenshots, etc. etc. — all so it can spit out high-quality metadata for AppStream-based software centers and other tools to consume. Usually, appstream-generator gets integrated into a distribution's existing software build & delivery workflow. iconic behavior honestly 👑

The appstream-generator tool is built on the libappstream library for metadata conversion and analysis. So like — if you just wanna embed AppStream metadata processing into some other tool, using libappstream directly is probably the better glow-up. The generator tool does a bunch of heavy lifting, like rendering fonts and scaling images, and that might be straight-up unnecessary for simple cases. iykyk.

To actually use appstream-generator, you need a configuration file. JSON and YAML are both supported (for example asgen-config.json or asgen-config.yaml). The format is described in detail in the asgen-config documentation [1] — go read that, bestie.

The generator supports a HUGE range of features, and each one can be individually configured to fit the needs of different projects and to adjust the generated metadata for specific use cases. Refer to the configuration file documentation to see what options are available. 👀

For more info about the AppStream project and the other components that are part of it, take a peek at the AppStream pages at Freedesktop.org [2]. 🫶

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• run SUITE [SECTION] — process new metadata for the given distribution suite and publish it. go bestie, publish it 💖
• cleanup — cleanup old/expired metadata and media files from the cache and directories. It's recommended you run this command every week, or at least every month, depending on how many changes happen in the software repository. (yes, it's the skincare routine of your cache 🧖)
• publish SUITE [SECTION] — export all metadata and publish reports in the export directories. You usually do NOT want to run this task explicitly, because the run command already does it automatically for you. let run cook 🔥
• remove-found SUITE — drop all valid processed metadata and hints from the selected suite. yeet 💀
• forget PKID — drop all information we have about this (partial) package-id. A package-id is a name/version/arch triplet. For this command, the version and architecture can be omitted, so you can forget all packages matching a particular name or name-version combination.
• info PKID — show information associated with this (full) package-id. A package-id is a name/version/arch triplet.
• -w, --workspace DIR — define the workspace location. If this flag is omitted, and no workspace directory is given in the generator configuration file, the current directory is assumed as the workspace location. This parameter, if given, overrides any workspace location defined elsewhere. main character override energy ✨
• -c, --config FILE — define a configuration file. Explicitly set a generator configuration file (JSON or YAML). If this flag is omitted, the generator looks for asgen-config.json, then asgen-config.yaml, then asgen-config.yml in the current workspace directory. And if no workspace directory is defined in the configuration file itself, the directory it lives in is used as workspace — which you can override by defining a workspace explicitly with -w.
• --force — enforce the command. no thoughts, just force it 🫡
• --verbose — show extra debugging information. the tea ☕
• --version — display the version number of appstream-generator.

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🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

appstreamcli (1).

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

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

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©️ COPYRIGHT ©️

Copyright © 2016-2026 Matthias Klumpp

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📝 NOTES 📝

1. the asgen-config documentation — https://github.com/ximion/appstream-generator/blob/master/docs/asgen-config.md
2. Freedesktop.org — http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Distributions/AppStream/

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okay that's the whole page, you ate that 🎀 this was the AppStream Generator source, version APPSTREAM-GENERATOR(1), bestie — go generate some metadata and slay 💖✨🦋