Please add a AppData application description

[Richard Hughes]

Please consider writing and installing an AppData file with the application description and some screenshots, else Widelands looks really bad in the GNOME Software Center. See http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/appdata/ for details; thanks!

[SirVer (sirver)]

How about you do that instead? it seems that you know something about AppData and are using Gnome. Most people in the team do not even use Linux these days, so they cannot check if what they wrote is correct. And you also seem to care which is an important prerequisite for making something happen.

[Richard Hughes (richard-hughes)]

Okay, that's a fair-enough comment. I've attached a validated appdata file to this bug. This needs to be installed into /usr/share/appdata when building for Linux.

[SirVer (sirver)]

Thanks Richard, that is immensely useful. I did not proofread the file, is that needed?

Jens, could you come up with a patch to the cmake files that make this happen?

[Richard Hughes (richard-hughes)]

The text was taken from your website, so it's completely up to you. You as the upstream vendor are free to promote your application however you like :)

[Teppo Mäenpää (kxq)]

Disclaimer: I do not use Gnome.

SirVer: Are old screen shots removed from the server if new ones are taken into use, or do the old files remain, in case they are referred outside the WL webpage? Is there a risk that some months later the Gnome user considering this game only sees invalid url complains?

In the comment, I would write "This AppData entry (c) 2014 Richard Hughes" instead of your name only, to keep things unambiguous. Or simply "The Widelands Development Team".

[SirVer (sirver)]

urls on the website should not change. we tried to keep them stable, and most of the times we succeeded.

The copyright "The Widelands Development Team" is appropriate, we use it everywhere.

[Jens Beyer (qcumber-some)]

As KDE user, I don't know anything of this, but it is no problem for me to setup a small VM with a Gnome based desktop.
If I need anything, I will comment on this bug ;-)

[SirVer (sirver)]

Setting to incomplete for bug sweeping.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Has this ever been added to the code? If so, we should consider making it translatable.

[SirVer (sirver)]

Not to my knowledge. Somebody who uses gnome must figure out where this should be installed too. And I have no clue how to make it translatable.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

More documentation:

https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Metadata.html

Translations can be defined like this:

  <name>GNOME Software</name>
  <name xml:lang="bs">Gnomovi programi</name>

Install dir needs to be: /usr/share/appdata

File can be validated with appstream-util validate

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

I am pretty much finished now, except for 2 things:

1. I left screenshot captions untranslated, because we will probably replace some of those before the release. Not all of them conform to the 16:9 standard anyway

2. I don't know where to define the installation to /usr/share/appdata. I have seen some installation code in CMakeLists.txt, but this file is Linux specific. So, I have no idea whether it goes there.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

The install instructions broke the PPA; so we will need to ask the Debian project for help on this one.

[kaputtnik (franku)]

As i understand it right, the file has to be named like "ubuntu-14.04-games.xml" (or packed with extension "...xml.gz") and stored in folder "/usr/share/app-info/xmls/". For the ppa it has to be named like "ppa-ubuntu14.04-widelands-dev-games.xml". But i don't know how to do this though.

See: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-DistroData.html#spec-asxml-filenaming

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

I've got a branch now which installs the file to /usr/share/appdata, but I'm struggling with verifying whether it works.

I'm testing on Ubuntu Yakkety with gnome-software (which I believe should use and display the information from appdata?). I don't see any effect when looking at the widelands package, nor for instance gnome-mines if I edit or replace the contents of the appdata file.

Is gnome-software actually using the appdata files, or is it just using regular package information? Is there any program on Ubuntu(/Debian) where I can easily test if this works?

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

When I just add the line

/usr/share/appdata

to debian/widelands.install, it will break the PPA.

Everybody I've asked says that that is what we should do and that it's a magic install, just like .desktop. Obviously it's the result of your research as well, and Launchpad can't handle it.

It it time to throw in the towel on this one?

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

>to debian/widelands.install, it will break the PPA.

Check my comment above and see the attached branch. I've edited rules instead, which works and it installs appdata. :)

Those were the good news. I haven't been able to verify that it actually does something though, because the data doesn't seem to show up anywhere (at least in gnome-software). I'm not sure if the problem is with the file, the path or it could be me looking in the wrong place. Anyone know what the expected behaviour is or how to verify it is being picked up?

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

It worked, all hail the hjd :)

Leaving this bug open, because we should update the screenshots (especially the one of the fs menu).

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

Thank you :)

I'll open a merge proposal for my branch.

I see by your screenshot that it works, but I'm still confused because I can't get it to work here. I'm running gnome-software on Yakkety, and it only displays the original English description (from the Ubuntu archives) without any screenshots when I look up Widelands. I even tried to install a different language in hope I'd get the translated version, but no such luck. Did you do any additional steps?

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

All I did was follow the install instructions on https://wl.widelands.org/wiki/Download/#ubuntu-recent-releases-and-derivatives-like-linux-mint-17 and reboot my computer.

My Ubuntu system language is set to Gaelic - you will need to change your system language to see the translation. And of course it needs to be translated on Transifex.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

New screenshots added in r8101.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Fixed in build19-rc1.