AppStream is an agreement between major

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

vendors (i.e.

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become ass ...

Canonical The adjective canonical is applied in many contexts to mean "according to the canon" the standard, rule or primary source that is accepted as authoritative for the body of knowledge or literature in that context. In mathematics, "canonical example ...

SUSE SUSE ( , ) is a German-based multinational open-source software company that develops and sells Linux products to business customers. Founded in 1992, it was the first company to market Linux for enterprise. It is the developer of SUSE Linux Ent ...

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

Mandriva Mandriva S.A. was a public software company specializing in Linux and open-source software. Its corporate headquarters was in Paris, and it had development centers in Metz, France and Curitiba, Brazil. Mandriva, S.A. was the developer and maint ...

, etc.) to create an infrastructure for application installers on Linux and sharing of

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

. The initiative was started as early as 19-21 January, 2011. The project describes itself as: "''an initiative of cross-distro collaboration, which aims at creating an unified software metadata database, and also a centralized OCS ( Open Collaboration Services) user-contributed content database, thus providing the best user experience.''" With the 0.6 release, the scope of the project was expanded to include more metadata for other software components, such as fonts, codecs, input-methods and generic

libraries A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

, which will allow applications to query information about software which is available in a distribution in a distribution-independent way. This enhances the quality of data displayed in software-centers, but also makes it possible for 3rd-party application installers like

Listaller Listaller is a free software, free computer software installation system (similar to a package management system) aimed at making it simple to create a package that can be installed on all Linux distributions as well as providing tools and API to ...

to find the components a new application needs to run in the distribution's package database. Additionally, the new metadata allows easier installation of prerequisites needed to build software in the first place, as well as matching upstream applications with distribution packages and matching packages across distributions, which might improve the process of exchanging patches. AppStream is also used for newer packaging methods such as

Snap Snap or SNAP may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Snap'', the original release title for the 2013 film ''Enter the Dangerous Mind'' *''Snap'' (TV series), a CITV programme * ''The Stanly News and Press'', a newspaper in Albemarle, North Carol ...

Flatpak Flatpak, formerly known as xdg-app, is a utility for software deployment and package management for Linux. It is advertised as offering a sandbox environment in which users can run application software in isolation from the rest of the system. ...

, and

AppImage AppImage is a format for distributing portable software on Linux without needing superuser permissions to install the application. It tries also to allow Linux distribution-agnostic binary software deployment for application developers, als ...

References

External links

*
AppData

AppStream at freedesktop.org

Project Bretzn

Phoronix - Introducing AppStream, Multi-Distro App Framework

Google Summer of Code 2011 - PackageKit backend and AppStream integration for Software Center

openSUSE's Application Manager
Free application software Linux package management-related software {{Linux-stub

See also

References

External links