Specifying sensible device types to use an application on in the desktop file

[Guido Günther]

Hi,
On Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 06:48:08AM +0200, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
> Am Fr., 9. Okt. 2020 um 18:03 Uhr schrieb Guido Günther <agx at sigxcpu.org>:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > I was thinking about appstream but my understanding is that as of today
> > the desktop file is the canonical place for such information but it
> > clearly would make sense to get that information from the appstream
> > metadata (and if only at package build time where the appstream and
> > desktop file are in the same source tree anyway so there's no need
> > to maintain that in two places - if there's agreement about
> > the specs).
> 
> The desktop-entry spec would very much be the right place for it as
> well, but it would also duplicate information in the AppStream
> metadata. Desktop-entry files can already be generated from metainfo
> files (`appstreamcli make-desktop-file`) since metainfo files contain
> *most* of the information that also is in desktop-entry files. There's
> some stuff from desktop-entry files though that makes zero sense in
> metainfo files (like the "Desktop Action" stuff), and some stuff from
> metainfo files that makes no sense in desktop-entry files (like long
> descriptions of apps).
> 
> AppStream specifies all metadata about an application that you need to
> know before you install it, desktop-entry files contain all the
> information that is needed for launching the app from a shell and
> integrating it into the UI.
> 
> However, if AppStream would already do what you want (and it pretty
> much needs to do that, as this is metadata you definitely want to know
> before installing an app), the question is whether you could just
> query the metainfo data instead of adding a new desktop-entry field.
> I see good arguments for both ;-)

I looked into querying the metainfo from appstream which basically works
and has the upside of already being specified. One thing I noticed
though is that flatpaks don't seem to export the metainfo to
/var/lib/flatpak/exports/ or ~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/. Am I just
missing something here or is this a gap? I didn't find any related issues.

Cheers,
 -- Guido



> 
> Cheers,
>     Matthias
> 
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