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Adding search to the flatpak cli by tingping

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utopian-io · @tingping · (edited)
$35.32
Adding search to the flatpak cli
The CLI experience provided by flatpak is not the most user friendly experience and part of the problem was difficulty in discovering applications. Previously the only data it exposed access to was the [OSTree](https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) metadata which didn't include much human friendly information.

Thankfully applications can provide [AppStream metadata](https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/) which was designed exactly for exposing information to users. With this information and a new dependency on [appstream-glib](https://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/appstream-glib/) we can add a `search` command to `flatpak` that loads up the appstream data for each configured remote and then searches through it matching the descriptions and names of applications.

A video of search in action:

[![asciicast](https://asciinema.org/a/kDFWduSJgfzENAJ2p4u0nMzUc.png)](https://asciinema.org/a/kDFWduSJgfzENAJ2p4u0nMzUc)

The main difficulties were providing enough information in the results to be useful, as the `flatpak` commands are a bit more verbose than other package managers, while not being overwhelming with information. Also a lot of packages don't include version information which is slowly being solved in existing packages.

Merge request: https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/pull/1136

<br /><hr/><em>Posted on <a href="https://utopian.io/utopian-io/@tingping/adding-search-to-the-flatpak-cli">Utopian.io -  Rewarding Open Source Contributors</a></em><hr/>
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vote details (6)
@codingdefined · 
Your contribution cannot be approved yet because it does not have **proof of work** because if your username in Utopian does not match that of Github, you need to provide logged in session of your Github Account and show the projects. 

See the [Utopian Rules](https://utopian.io/rules). Please edit your contribution and add **proof** (links, screenshots, commits, etc) of your work, to reapply for approval.

You may edit your post [here](https://utopian.io/utopian-io/@tingping/adding-search-to-the-flatpak-cli), as shown below: 
![](https://res.cloudinary.com/hpiynhbhq/image/upload/v1509788371/nbgbomithszxs3nxq6gx.png)

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@tingping · 
You are mistaken, the linked PR is by "TingPing" the same name here and linked with this account.
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@codingdefined · 
Yeah Sorry, my bad. Accepted the contribution.
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@codingdefined · 
Thank you for the contribution. It has been approved.

You can contact us on [Discord](https://discord.gg/UCvqCsx).
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@tingping · 
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@originalworks ·
originalworks
The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @tingping to be original material and upvoted it! 
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@utopian-io · 
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