Bug#958915: gnome-software: plugin appstream is disabled beacause /usr/share/appdata doesn’t exist

[Johan Fleury]

Package: gnome-software
Version: 3.36.0-2
Severity: important

Dear Maintainers,

On a clean installation of Debian Sid with GNOME 3, I found myself unable to use `gnome-software` as Debian packages where not listed at all.

It seems that gnome-software’s checks that `/usr/share/appdata` exists as a condition to enable the `appstream` plugin.

At startup, gnome-software shows these logs:

```
16:37:41:0068 Gs  enabled plugins: desktop-categories, fwupd, os-release, packagekit, packagekit-local, packagekit-offline, packagekit-proxy, packagekit-refine-repos, packagekit-refresh, packagekit-upgrade, packagekit-url-to-app, desktop-menu-path, flatpak, hardcoded-blacklist, hardcoded-popular, modalias, packagekit-refine, rewrite-resource, odrs, packagekit-history, provenance, systemd-updates, generic-updates, provenance-license, icons, key-colors, key-colors-metadata
16:37:41:0068 Gs  disabled plugins: dpkg, dummy, repos, appstream
```

With option `--verbose` it also shows this log:

```
16:34:31:0313 Gs  disabling appstream as setup failed: Error opening directory ?/usr/share/appdata?: No such file or directory
```

I believe this check should either be removed or a package (either `gnome-software` or `appstream`) should create the `/usr/share/appdata`.

---

-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 5.5.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=fr_FR:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages gnome-software depends on:
ii  appstream                                    0.12.10-2
ii  apt-config-icons                             0.12.10-2
ii  dconf-gsettings-backend [gsettings-backend]  0.36.0-1
ii  gnome-software-common                        3.36.0-2
ii  gsettings-desktop-schemas                    3.36.0-1
ii  libappstream-glib8                           0.7.17-1
ii  libatk1.0-0                                  2.36.0-2
ii  libc6                                        2.30-4
ii  libcairo2                                    1.16.0-4
ii  libfwupd2                                    1.3.9-4
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0                           2.40.0+dfsg-4
ii  libglib2.0-0                                 2.64.2-1
ii  libgspell-1-2                                1.8.3-1
ii  libgtk-3-0                                   3.24.18-1
ii  libgtk3-perl                                 0.037-1
ii  libgudev-1.0-0                               233-1
ii  libjson-glib-1.0-0                           1.4.4-2
ii  libpackagekit-glib2-18                       1.1.13-2+b1
ii  libpolkit-gobject-1-0                        0.105-26
ii  libsoup2.4-1                                 2.70.0-1
ii  libxmlb1                                     0.1.15-2
ii  packagekit                                   1.1.13-2+b1
ii  software-properties-gtk                      0.96.20.2-2.1

Versions of packages gnome-software recommends:
ii  fwupd  1.3.9-4

Versions of packages gnome-software suggests:
pn  apt-config-icons-hidpi         <none>
ii  gnome-software-plugin-flatpak  3.36.0-2
pn  gnome-software-plugin-snap     <none>

-- no debconf information

--
Johan Fleury
PGP Key ID : 0x5D404386805E56E6
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