.desktop
file to be visible in application menus.
.desktop
files to represent an application in the AppStream metadata pool. Upstream projects should ship a metainfo file containing additional metadata to describe their application though, to enhance the available metadata. This data includes things like screenshots, long descriptions, icon information and various other things needed to present the application properly to the user. For some distributions, the presence of this metadata is a prerequisite for the application showing up in the metadata pool and being presented in software centers.
.desktop
file. Applications can ship one or more files in /usr/share/metainfo/%{id}.appdata.xml
.
launch
tags are defined, no data will be merged in from .desktop files.
Note
type
property set to desktop-application
, while in a generic component this property can be omitted. This clearly identifies this metainfo document as describing an application.
Note
generic
component specification are valid for desktop-application
components as well. An application is just a specialized component, allowing tools like software centers to filter out the component types they want to display.
Note
desktop-application
component type is the same as the desktop
component type - desktop
is the older type identifier for desktop-applications and should not be used for new metainfo files, unless compatibility with very old AppStream tools (pre 2016) is still wanted.
<id/>
tag value must follow the reverse-DNS scheme as described in <id/>.
Note
<id/>
was used to associate metainfo files with their .desktop files to merge in data from .desktop files into the AppStream generator's final output. In modern metainfo files, the component-ID for desktop-application
components can be an arbitrary string (matching the naming rules applying to all AppStream metadata), while the <launchable/> tag is used to associate .desktop files with their metainfo files.
<metadata_license/>
tag as described in <metadata_license/> must be present.
Comment
field of the accompanying .desktop
file of the application.
<launchable/>
tag is present in desktop-application
metainfo files. The tag is described in detail at <launchable/>.
launchable
entry of type desktop-id
is present, AppStream metadata generators might decide to merge metadata from .desktop files referenced by the tag into their final output.
launchable
tag is optional, but if omitted software centers will not be able to launch the application directly after it was installed.
<screenshots/>
tag should look like it is described at <screenshots/>.
PATH
, you should add at least a child of type <binary/>
to make that new executable known to the distribution.
<releases/>
tag, which has one or more <release/>
childs to define the version and release date of this application. For details, see <releases/> .
desktop-application
, the following tags are required and must always be present: <id/>, <name/>, <summary/>, <description/>, <metadata_license/>.