[AppStream] Introduction of "launchable" tag for metainfo files

[Matthias Klumpp]

2017-04-21 11:52 GMT+02:00 Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com>:
> On 21 April 2017 at 10:50, Matthias Klumpp <matthias at tenstral.net> wrote:
>> I initially wanted to implement exactly that as fallback, but
>> technically if the component defines no launchable like that, it means
>> that the component is not supposed to be launched. This is the case
>> for example with Wine.
>
> But is wine a component type "desktop-application"? If so, that seems wrong.

It is - firstly, because it actually makes some sense to be a
desktop-application (makes less sense without a desktop GUI), and
secondly because GNOME Software only ever showing desktop-apps kind of
makes app developers try to game the system if they want their apps
shown there.

>> The asgen AppStream generator however, does use the <id/> tag to check
>> whether there is an id + .desktop desktop-entry-file somewhere, and if
>> it finds one, it will auto-generate a launchable tag from it, in order
>> to not make all apps in the archive suddenly unlaunchable until
>> upstream projects migrate their files.
>
> I don't think I can do a generator-side fallback as I need to support
> really old appstream files too.

You could check for "is the .desktop file there" before showing a
launch button, essentially doing a fallback in GNOME Software instead
of hiding the behavior in asglib with some compatibility glue.

Cheers,
    Matthias

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