GNOME app list

This project provides app recommendation data for the GNOME project, in the form of AppStream data which is installed in the standard system location. This is mainly used by the Software app.

The goals of the project are to:

1. Ensure that high-quality apps are recommended.
2. Ensure that the recommended apps are kept up to date.
3. Allow app recommendations to be maintained and released separately from gnome-software.

There is more context available in the discussion on this issue.

Project overview

The most interesting parts of gnome-app-list are:

• /data: contains lists of apps:
  • flathub-apps.txt: recommended apps pulled from Flathub
  • gnome-apps.txt: GNOME Circle apps
  • other-apps.txt: a manually curated set of apps (currently empty)
• /scripts:
  • update_apps.py: updates the app lists based on data from Flathub and GNOME Circle
  • xml_generator.py: generates AppStream data from the app lists

App tagging

Each of the files in the /data directory contains a list of apps. Each file also includes configuration for tags that are applied to each app. These tags are then translated to the outputted AppStream XML which is read by gnome-software, and determines where in the UI each app is shown.

There are two types of tags: flags and categories.

Flag / Category	Outputted XML tag	UI destination	Minimum No. Required*
flag: popular	<kudos><kudo>GnomeSoftware::popular</kudo></kudos>	Banners on category pages, editor's picks on the Explore page	1, 6
flag: featured	<custom><value key="GnomeSoftware::FeatureTile">True</value></custom>	Banners on explore pages	5
category: featured	<categories><category>Featured</category></categories>	Editor's picks on category pages	3

* This is the number of apps that must be available to make the relevant UI section be visible in the Software app.

See vendor-customisation.md for more details about metainfo tags.

How to update gnome-app-list

To update data/flathub-apps.txt run in the project root:

python3 ./scripts/update_apps.py flathub

To update data/gnome-apps.txt run in the project root:

python3 ./scripts/update_apps.py gnome

How to test

Rough instructions for how to test how Software performs with a particular set of AppStream data files:

• Generate the AppStream XML locally from the app lists: python3 ./scripts/xml_generator.py data/flathub-apps.txt data/gnome-apps.txt data/other-apps.txt. This will generate org.gnome.App-list.xml.
• Create a VM with a recent version of GNOME. Then, in the VM:
  • Clear out the old app recommendations data:
    • cd /usr/share/swcatalog/xml/ and remove the XML files
    • rm -rf ~/.cache/gnome-software/
  • Copy the newly generated XML from gnome-app-list to /usr/share/swcatalog/xml/
  • Restart Software: gnome-software --quit && gnome-software