AppStream is a metadata specification which permits software components to provide information
about themselves to automated systems and end-users before the software is actually installed.

The <em>appstream-generator</em> tool generates AppStream metadata from the repositories of a
software distribution. It currently supports the following repository formats / distributions: Debian,
Ubuntu, Arch Linux, RPM-MD (Fedora, Mageia).

The generator will produce AppStream catalog metadata files in the AppStream YAML or XML format
to be shipped to users, as well as a detailed HTML report about found components and HTML and JSON
reports on issues detected with the scanned metadata. It reads .desktop files as well as metainfo
files, renders fonts, scales images, caches screenshots etc. to produce high-quality metadata for
AppStream based software centers to consume. Usually, <em>appstream-generator</em> is integrated
with the existing software build & packaging workflow of a distribution.