AppStream is an agreement between major

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

vendors (i.e.

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...

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 exampl ...

, SUSE,

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

Mandriva Mandriva S.A. was a Public company, 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 deve ...

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

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * 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 Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

, which will allow applications to query information about software which is available 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 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 by packaging methods such as Snap,

Flatpak Flatpak is a utility for software deployment and package management for Linux. It provides a sandbox environment in which users can run application software in (partial) isolation from the rest of the system. Flatpak was known as xdg-app unti ...

, and AppImage.

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