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Differential D3065

Add Release information to AppStream metadata and improve description
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Authored by Nate Graham (ngraham) on Feb 15 2018, 5:28 AM.

Details

Reviewers
Diego Gangl (januz)
Sergey Sharybin (sergey)
Bastien Montagne (mont29)
Brecht Van Lommel (brecht)
Campbell Barton (campbellbarton)
Aaron Carlisle (Blendify)
Commits
rBSfbc11a86c8f3: FreeDesktop: Add Release information to AppStream
rBfbc11a86c8f3: FreeDesktop: Add Release information to AppStream
Summary

This patch improves Blender's AppStream metadata with minor punctuation and grammar improvements to the description, and a new <release> tag for the current release.

The <release> tag benefits Blender in the following ways:

  • Flathub users get to see the actual release number instead of "stable"
  • Make it easy for all packagers to include changelogs, so Blender's users gets to see what's new in 2.79
  • Blender gets featured in GNOME software to reward it for having Release information in its AppStream metadata (KDE Discover plans do do the same thing)

If the prior objection to adding release data to the AppStream metadata was the ongoing maintenance burden, I volunteer to take it on for subsequent Blender releases.

Diff Detail

Repository
rB Blender
Branch
improved-appstream-data (branched from master)
Build Status
Buildable 1269
Build 1269: arc lint + arc unit

Event Timeline

Nate Graham (ngraham) created this revision.Feb 15 2018, 5:28 AM
Nate Graham (ngraham) edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)Feb 15 2018, 5:32 AM
Campbell Barton (campbellbarton) added a comment.Feb 15 2018, 8:24 AM
  • Is this going to end up being a list of every release?
  • Should bugfix releases (2.79a for eg) replace stable releases?
Brecht Van Lommel (brecht) added inline comments.Feb 15 2018, 12:29 PM
release/freedesktop/org.blender.Blender.appdata.xml
47

De-noise -> Denoiser

Nate Graham (ngraham) added a comment.Feb 20 2018, 8:25 PM

Sorry for the delay, for some reason I didn't get email for these comments.

In D3065#72493, @Campbell Barton (campbellbarton) wrote:
  • Is this going to end up being a list of every release?

Yep.

  • Should bugfix releases (2.79a for eg) replace stable releases?

That's a great question I don't yet have an answer for. Let me look into that for you.

Campbell Barton (campbellbarton) added a comment.Feb 21 2018, 9:24 AM

Would rather not have an entire history of all future Blender releases in this file,
we have this already here: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/getting_started/about/history.html#version-revision-milestones

Could we just keep the latest release information, or failing that - could this file be stored elsewhere?

Nate Graham (ngraham) added a comment.Feb 23 2018, 5:16 PM
In D3065#72633, @Campbell Barton (campbellbarton) wrote:

Would rather not have an entire history of all future Blender releases in this file,
we have this already here: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/getting_started/about/history.html#version-revision-milestones

Could we just keep the latest release information, or failing that - could this file be stored elsewhere?

Only having the latest version in there should be OK. Ideally we could programmatically generate the release information in the AppStream file from your existing data so nobody would ever have to look at it ever again, but that's a bigger effort.

Nate Graham (ngraham) updated this revision to Diff 10121.Feb 28 2018, 2:15 AM

Fix launchable tag, per AppStream spec
(https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Metadata.html#tag-launchable)

Nate Graham (ngraham) added a comment.Feb 28 2018, 2:26 AM
In D3065#72619, @Nate Graham (ngraham) wrote:

Sorry for the delay, for some reason I didn't get email for these comments.

In D3065#72493, @Campbell Barton (campbellbarton) wrote:
  • Is this going to end up being a list of every release?

Yep.

  • Should bugfix releases (2.79a for eg) replace stable releases?

That's a great question I don't yet have an answer for. Let me look into that for you.

The answer is: this is why multiple <release> tags are supported and encouraged. Ideally you'd make a new <release> tag for every release to users, and then the presentation is left up to software center apps.

What's the objection to letting multiple <release> tags live in the file, out of curiosity? When adding a new one, you just... don't remove the old one. Like I said, I'm happy to maintain the file.

Nate Graham (ngraham) updated this revision to Diff 10122.Feb 28 2018, 5:12 AM

De-noise -> Denoiser

Nate Graham (ngraham) marked an inline comment as done.Feb 28 2018, 5:12 AM
Nate Graham (ngraham) added a comment.Mar 19 2018, 9:24 PM

Friendly ping!

Nate Graham (ngraham) added a comment.Mar 29 2018, 4:44 AM

Friendly ping!

Diego Gangl (januz) added a comment.Mar 29 2018, 3:49 PM

LGTM

About the releases tag: Blender used to have a new version very ~3 months that packed quite a few features, this has slowed down for 2.79/2.8 now but 2.8x releases could come out a similar pace again. I think the main concern is that the file would be constantly growing and become unmanageable in a few years. Maybe it could be limited to the last 3 releases? Blender users tend to always run the latest or latest-1 anyways.

Here's the version history: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/getting_started/about/history.html
(Click on any of the version numbers for the full changelog)

AFAIK the changelogs are created manually and there's no simple text version, so they would have to be re-done manually for the appstream file.

Nate Graham (ngraham) added a comment.Mar 29 2018, 3:56 PM
In D3065#74100, @Diego Gangl (januz) wrote:

LGTM

About the releases tag: Blender used to have a new version very ~3 months that packed quite a few features, this has slowed down for 2.79/2.8 now but 2.8x releases could come out a similar pace again. I think the main concern is that the file would be constantly growing and become unmanageable in a few years. Maybe it could be limited to the last 3 releases? Blender users tend to always run the latest or latest-1 anyways.

That sounds reasonable enough.

Aaron Carlisle (Blendify) requested changes to this revision.Apr 16 2018, 4:28 AM
Aaron Carlisle (Blendify) added a subscriber: Aaron Carlisle (Blendify).

Add a comment in the file stating to include only last three versions of blender.

This revision now requires changes to proceed.Apr 16 2018, 4:28 AM
Nate Graham (ngraham) added a comment.Apr 16 2018, 4:59 AM

What might be more helpful to users is to only include the last major version, but all of its minor versions too (e.g. 2.79a, 2.79b, 2.79c, etc). What do you think?

Vuk Gardašević (lijenstina) added a subscriber: Vuk Gardašević (lijenstina).Apr 16 2018, 5:17 AM
<url type="homepage">http://www.blender.org</url>

Should this be https ?

Nate Graham (ngraham) updated this revision to Diff 10397.Apr 16 2018, 5:37 AM

Use https for the blender.org URL

Nate Graham (ngraham) added a comment.Apr 16 2018, 5:37 AM

Yes! I've amended the change to fix that too.

Campbell Barton (campbellbarton) accepted this revision.Apr 16 2018, 7:46 AM

LGTM: last 3 releases + a,b,c... seems reasonable.

Nate Graham (ngraham) added a comment.Aug 15 2018, 1:35 AM

So uh, what's next for this? Is anything needed from me?

This revision was not accepted when it landed; it landed in state Needs Review.Jun 2 2019, 4:24 PM
Closed by commit rBfbc11a86c8f3: FreeDesktop: Add Release information to AppStream (authored by Aaron Carlisle (Blendify)). · Explain Why
This revision was automatically updated to reflect the committed changes.

Revision Contents
Changeset List

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release/
freedesktop/
33 lines

Diff 10121

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release/freedesktop/org.blender.Blender.appdata.xml

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