[Mageia-dev] AppStream project

[Samuel Verschelde]

Hi, 

As promised last week during the packagers meeting, here is a wiki page 
dedicated to the AppStream project.

http://www.mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=appstream

Please take a look at the list of "things to do", maybe there's something some 
of us can work on ?

Here is a an extract :
===================================================
Tasks that can already start
    * improve packagekit's urpmi back-end (see the feature matrix : 
http://www.packagekit.org/pk-matrix.html)
    * begin work on making the Ubuntu Software Center work on mageia, with 
Michaël Vogt's (main developer of the USC) and Richard Hugues' (packagekit) 
help
    * start creating the appdata.xml files in repositories, based on metadata 
extracted from the .desktop files. It won't be complete yet but it would be 
useful to have the production chain already in place, and mageia-app-db could 
use this information to differentiate applications from other packages (it's 
based on a fixed list at the moment). See 
http://gitorious.org/appstream/resources/blobs/master/appdata.xsd
    * adapt urpmi so that it downloads those metadata on the client system 
when adding or updating media
===================================================

The metadata part (appdata.xml) is one of the most important things. All 
distributions present at the Nuremberg meeting agreed to try to have the chain 
of production and the appdata.xml file produced in the next 2 or 3 months. It 
would be great if we did it in time (yeah, I know, we also have a distribution 
to build :)). And as a side benefit, I could use the information contained in 
the appdata.xml file in mageia-app-db :)

Cheers

Samuel Verschelde