[AppStream] AppStream 0.14.0 released!

[Matthias Klumpp]

Hi!
A new AppStream release is out, and this one is huge. Among a lot of
bugfixes and performance improvements (as well as two memory leak
fixes) it contains a huge amount of new features. A lot of them are
making private API public, but others are also new general features
and specification extensions.
Many of the changes were made in order to make it easier for GNOME
Software to use libappstream.
One aspect of the GNOME Software compatibility is that component
data-IDs gained a fifth part for a "branch name". If you parse the IDs
with AppStream's functions, this change is fully backwards compatible.
If you do your own parsing of these IDs, please check if you have
4-part or 5-part IDs and split accordingly.
The branch name is not used by AppStream (it is just passed through),
but needed in GNOME Software for Flatpak and Snappy support.

Tarballs available here:
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/releases/

Cheers!
    Matthias

Version 0.14.0
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Released: 2021-02-02

Notes:
 * Component data-IDs gain a fifth part for a "branch". If you parse
the IDs with AppStream's
   functions, this change is fully backwards compatible. If you do
your own parsing of these
   IDs, please check if you have 4-part or 5-part IDs and split accordingly.
   The branch is not used by AppStream (it is just passed through),
but needed in GNOME Software
   for Flatpak and Snappy support.
 * AppStream-Generator depends on libappstream-compose now, however
the API is still not stable, so
   please do not use it unless you either are appstream-generator or
like using experimental code.

Features:
 * news-to-metainfo: Interpret placeholder release dates as denoting a
dev version
 * Make as_utils_build_data_id public API
 * Add AsReview for attaching user reviews to software components
 * Add compile-time version test macros
 * Add a branch element to component data-IDs
 * Add branch property to AsComponent
 * utils: Add data-ID hashing and matching functions
 * utils: Make as_gstring_replace public API
 * Add branch info to on-disk cached components
 * content-rating: Add as_content_rating_add_attribute API
 * Rename INPUTMETHOD component kind enum to INPUT_METHOD
 * Add "cabinet" bundle type for firmware deployments
 * Make AsTokenMatch public API
 * Add function to AsScreenshot to get image closest to preferred size
 * Allow AsComponent to directly ingest desktop-entry data
 * Make as_pool_build_search_tokens API public
 * Add "origin" token match
 * Make as_component_add_provided_item API public
 * Add some useful image dimension constants
 * compose: Add blur function from asglib
 * Add more efficient load_from_bytes method to AsComponent
 * Add methods to load metadata directly from GBytes
 * compose: Make image loading code more versatile
 * Add editorconfig
 * Make more use of RefString in AsComponent
 * Revamp version comparison algorithm
 * ascli: Add native profiling support
 * compose: Reduce Hint memory usage, allow to retrieve var list
 * compose: Allow clients to add their own, new hint tags
 * compose: Allow hints to be created from tags, include validator hints in pool
 * compose: XML-escape validator explanations
 * compose: Add a few more methods from asgen's GeneratorResult
 * compose: Add helper method for metainfo validation
 * compose: Add metainfo parsing helper function
 * Implement "filename" property for release artifacts
 * ascli: Add new `os-info` subcommand
 * Add code to validate platform triplets
 * validator: Validate more release-tag specific issues
 * Add utils helper function to install a variety of metadata
 * Improve desktop-entry tests, always add "launchable" tag
 * Update AppStream format version
 * qt: Add bindings for relations API (requires/recommends)
 * Use ref-strings for locale hash tables and token tables

Specification:
 * docs: Update revision and date
 * spec: Add "cabinet" bundle type for firmware deployments
 * spec: Allow "filename" tag in release artifacts
 * docs: Clarify section on release artifact platform triplets
 * spec: Properly mark mailto: links in contact URLs as deprecated

Bugfixes:
 * parse-desktop: Do not try to propagate a null error (Aleix Pol)
 * Retain loaded context in AsMetadata and allow external media base url changes
 * meson: Use project arguments instead of global arguments
 * ascli: Improve text reflow in console output
 * metainfo-to-news: Use "*" instead of "-" for markdown enumerations
 * Drop unneeded compiler warning override
 * Fix small memory leak in AsTranslation
 * Avoid extra strlen() call when loading metadata from file
 * Fix a few more memory leaks
 * validator: Add some more tests
 * ascli: Remove some code duplication, improve help summary text
 * meson: Hardcode less paths
 * tests: Add version comparison tests from appstream-glib, to ensure
we compare the same
 * gir: Ensure as_version_string shows up in introspection data
 * ascli: Improve display of indented long-text output
 * compose: Fix build with GLib < 2.66
 * Make sure there are no duplicate operating-system components
 * compose: Ensure font selection for symbolic fonts actually works
 * validator: Ensure we return false in API functions if validation failed
 * Ignore minimal translations in metainfo description texts

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