[AppStream] Moving the AppStream collection metadata location

[Matthias Klumpp]

Hi!

Am Mo., 14. Feb. 2022 um 16:05 Uhr schrieb Nate Graham <nate at kde.org>:
>
> Since we already have /usr/share/applications, perhaps the appstream
> metadata could go in /usr/share/applications-metadata. This folder name
> would have a logical connection to the place where apps' desktop files
> go, and be descriptive without using the project name.

The AppStream metadata is for fonts, icon-themes, firmware, drivers
and pretty much anything that is software (including CLI apps), so
placing the catalog data where desktop-entry data of installed apps
belongs feels a bit misplaced.
Furthermore, we may run into conflict with the XDG spec on this
directory which states that subdirs in /usr/share/applications are
basically desktop-entry-file namespaces (was heavily used in the
KDE4->KDE5 transition, but is IMHO a pretty obscure feature).

> Alternatively, perhaps they could all just go in
> /usr/share/applications, since from a certain point of view, the
> .desktop files in there are already a form of metadata, so we could
> consolidate all the app metadata into a single folder for simplicity.

Same problems :-) I am also only talking about the catalog data[1]
that the distributor compiles here, not the stuff in
/usr/share/metainfo - that will stay there (and any change to that
directory at this point would be so much work for so little gain that
I very much want to avoid touching that name ever again - I even
underestimated how long the appdata -> metainfo transition would take,
and that happened when there were much fewer metainfo files around)
;-)

Cheers,
    Matthias

[1]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-CollectionData.html#sect-AppStream-XML

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