Linux and application installing

[Richard Hughes]

On 17 September 2010 08:01, FlorianFesti <ffesti at redhat.com> wrote:
> Can someone please elaborate a bit what pieces of information are really
> needed? The .desktop files as a whole?

Information we use in app-install:

TABLE translations:
STRING application_id Name of the desktop file, with no extension)
STRING application_name Name in desktop file, in locale)
STRING application_summary Comment in desktop file, in locale)
STRING locale System locale

TABLE applications:
STRING application_id Name of the desktop file, with no extension
STRING package_name The package name, e.g. 'nautilus'
STRING categories Categories from desktop file, _not_ PK groups or PK categories
STRING repo_id For adding and removal
STRING icon_name Local filename with extension, e.g. "totem-pl.png".
This is required so that local theme can override upstream icon
STRING application_name Name in desktop file
STRING application_summary Comment in desktop file
INTEGER rating Rating in percent. 0 is unrated, and 100% is the best
application in the world.
STRING screenshot_url Screenshot URL that shows exmple usage.
BOOLEAN installed If the application is installed NB: you are required
to run app-install-admin --refresh-installed after each package
install or remove if you use this feature.

So, most of the data is extracted from the desktop file, but the icons
often need to be resized and converted into png format which takes a
bit of time. The rating comes from [is present in] comps, but will be
populated by the gnome3 application stats, and I'm thinking of
pointing screenshot_url at pkgdb for now.

So, you still need more data than just the desktop file. When i
generate fedora-app-install I use the desktop data for 90% of the
data, and then use comps to fudge a popularity score, and then
manually add the pkgdb link.

It's a more manual process than I would like, although you can pretty
much leave the generator to "do it's thing" which is 90% of the work.
I think it's a ton more data than you want as rpm provides.

Richard.