2.5. Addons

⁠2.5. Addons

⁠2.5.1. Introduction

Some software is not standalone, but rather extends existing software installed on the system. The addon component type exists to reflect that.

Software which provides addons can ship one or more files in /usr/share/metainfo/%{id}.metainfo.xml.

⁠2.5.2. Example file

A addon meta-info file should look like this:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<component type="addon">
  <id>org.gnome.gedit-code-assistance</id>
  <extends>org.gnome.gedit.desktop</extends>
  <name>Code Assistance</name>
  <summary>Code assistance for C, C++ and Objective-C</summary>
  <url type="homepage">http://projects.gnome.org/gedit</url>
  <metadata_license>CC0-1.0</metadata_license>
  <project_license>GPL-3.0+</project_license>
</component>

⁠2.5.3. File specification

Note that the XML root must have the type property set to addon. This clearly identifies this metainfo document as describing an addon to existing software.

⁠<id/>

For addons, the %{id} must follow the component-id naming conventions (see <id/>).

⁠<extends/>

This tag is refers to the ID of the component this addon is extending.

For example, if there is a plugin "kipi" which extens the application "Gwenview", it needs to be referred to as:

<extends>org.kde.Gwenview</extends>

The <extends/> tag may be specified multiple times.

For a component of type addon, the following tags are required and must be present: <id/>, <name/>, <summary/>, <metadata_license/>, <extends/>.