Title: AppStream and Component Metadata for Debian
DEP: 11
State: ACCEPTED
Date: 2011-10-12
Drivers: Matthias Klumpp <mak@debian.org>,
         Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org>,
         Michael Vogt <mvo@debian.org>
URL: http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep11
Source: https://salsa.debian.org/dep-team/deps/-/blob/master/web/deps/dep11.mdwn
Abstract:
 Proposal to increase the amount of upstream metadata provided by
 Debian packages, as well as adding new files to Debian repositories
 which provide all data required for the cross-distro metadata project
 and software-center backend AppStream.

Introduction

While originally DEP-11 was a Debian-specific project to increase metadata provided by packages in Debian, most of its original ideas have been moved upstream into the AppStream project and are now implemented by AppStream itself.

So, by now (2015) it is safe to say that DEP-11 is the implementation of AppStream for the Debian archive, providing a large amount of machine-upstream metadata to our users and clients like GNOME Software and KDE Discover.

You can find the original (and outdated) proposal for DEP-11 in the Debian Wiki.

All recent information is provided in the AppStream documentation at Freedesktop, which contains all information needed for upstream projects (or in exceptions, packagers) to write the necessary metadata, as well as details on how it is shipped. The YAML implementation of the AppStream collection metadata format, also known as DEP-11, i documented there as well.

The source-code of AppStream (the client tool and parser) can be found on Github.

Usage Instructions

Information for users on how to enable and use AppStream in Debian is provided at wiki.d.o/AppStream. Some useful information for packages can be found there as well, on wiki.d.o/AppStream/Guidelines.

Package data extraction

The appstream-generator tool periodically extracts metadata about software components from packages in the Debian archive. Its results are added to the archive by Dak.

The output of the extractions and all issue hints for packagers, as well as the metadata itself, can be inspected at appstream.d.o.