Today I learned that it’s possible to specify the AppStream meta information in YAML instead of XML. AppStream is part of the Freedesktop standard and provides metadata about installed and installable application. Starting from simple information like a name and description, to issue trackers, websites, screenshots and more. But also information such as releases, supported MIME types, provided binaries and more. These information are used by software stores such as GNOME software, where users can easily select software they want to install.

I came across this, when looking up some details of the specification just to discover that there is also a “AppStream collection YAML” entry, which sounds like an interesting alternative to XML.