blog/data/2016-02-04-appstream-firmware.txt

   1 Title: Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support
   2 Tags: english, debian
   3 Date: 2016-02-04 16:40
   4
   5 <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a> is
   6 taking shape in Debian, and one feature set that is very convenient is
   7 its ability to tell you want package to install to get a given
   8 firmware file.  This can be done using apt-file too, but that is for
   9 someone else to blog about. :)</p>
  10
  11 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
  12 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
  13 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
  14 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
  15 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
  16 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
  17
  18 <blockquote><pre>
  19 % apt install appstream
  20 [...]
  21 % apt update
  22 [...]
  23 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
  24   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
  25 firmware-qlogic
  26 %
  27 </pre></blockquote>
  28
  29 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
  30 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
  31 a way appstream can use.</p>
  32
  33 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
  34 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
  35 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
  36 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
  37 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
  38 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
  39
  40 <blockquote><pre>
  41 % apt install appstream
  42 [...]
  43 % apt update
  44 [...]
  45 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
  46   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
  47 bkchem
  48 phototonic
  49 inkscape
  50 shutter
  51 tetzle
  52 geeqie
  53 xia
  54 pinta
  55 gthumb
  56 karbon
  57 comix
  58 mirage
  59 viewnior
  60 postr
  61 ristretto
  62 kolourpaint4
  63 eog
  64 eom
  65 gimagereader
  66 midori
  67 %
  68 </pre></blockquote>
  69
  70 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
  71 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>