SUMMARY When I start discover I get a pointless "Make sure that AppStream is properly set up on your system". What is it trying to tell me? What am I supposed to do about this as a user? STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Start Discover OBSERVED RESULT Passive popup "Make sure that AppStream is properly set up on your system". EXPECTED RESULT No passive popup, or at least a helpful error, even better with a "Let me fix that for you" button. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS KDE Plasma Version: 5.15.80 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.58 Qt Version: 5.12.0
I've never gotten this myself, but I've heard of other who have gotten it too. We should either suppress this error message or somehow make it actionable.
Which distribution? Do you reckon your appstream is properly set? This is something your distribution should be doing and maintaining.
(In reply to Aleix Pol from comment #2) > Do you reckon your appstream is properly set? This is something your > distribution should be doing and maintaining. All the more reason not to bug the user about it. :) If we need to tell the user that something is broken but it's not Discover's fault, a PassiveNotification probably isn't the right way to do it.
What's the right way to do it? In this case the only right answer is have the problem not exist. if a distro information gets broken, we need to nudge its users to get the issue solved.
(In reply to Aleix Pol from comment #4) > What's the right way to do it? > > In this case the only right answer is have the problem not exist. if a > distro information gets broken, we need to nudge its users to get the issue > solved. I agree, but a quickly disappearing message saying "Make sure that AppStream is properly set up on your system" doesn't do that. :) The message needs to indicate: - What is wrong in words that users can understand - That it is the fault of their distro and not Discover - How they can fix it themselves, or who they can contact to get it fixed The current message doesn't do any of that. My recommendation would be to show the message in a Kirigami InlineMessage, and for it to be worded more like this: "Your <distro name> operating system is not providing accurate and up-to-date information. Applications may show less detailed information, and search results may be less accurate. To fix this issue, please do <thing that will fix it locally for the user> and file a bug for the <distro name> maintainers at <distro bugtracker URL>."
The problem though is that we don't know what's wrong. The AppStream premise is that the distribution should be taking care of it, if they're not then we're just broken. We can give complex hints like to a blindfolded kid trying to hit the piñata but in the end it's a matter of the distro delivering the data.
Where does the message come from? AppStream itself? Are we literally just passing on the string it gives us and it isn't telling us what might be wrong?
I get the message and there is no functionality to the app, I was looking for a video player app and nothing was available, when I widened the search function to only Multimedia nothing is available, so I further widened it to the "home page" and still nothing is available. Someone must have taken all the apps down (Sad face)
I have also received this AppStream message. I found in the console log: 'Could not open the AppStream metadata pool "Some components have been ignored: Metadata files have errors: /var/cache/app-info/xmls/mkyral-plasma-unstable.xml.gz"' This references a repo that I previously had added which was having issues and I was no longer using. I removed the repo completely and also deleted the file it complained about above and the AppStream message disappeared. This is probably not the only possible cause of the message but hopefully this is helpful in figuring out what's going wrong. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS KDE Plasma Version 5.15.5 KDE Frameworks Version 5.59.0 Qt Version: 5.12.4
Created attachment 124687 [details] Discover "Appstream" error
(In reply to Briggs from comment #10) > Created attachment 124687 [details] > Discover "Appstream" error I get this on a fresh install of Fedora31 KDE
@Briggs, can you confirm it's properly set up? i.e. can you run "appstreamcli refresh" on your system and tell us if it succeeds and removes the error?
(In reply to Aleix Pol from comment #12) > @Briggs, can you confirm it's properly set up? i.e. can you run > "appstreamcli refresh" on your system and tell us if it succeeds and removes > the error? I'm very sorry. I no longer have it installed.
Assuming it's fixed, haven't seen it in any major distro for a while, meaning they just fixed their AppStream.