Don’t force a default list of featured/popular apps
gnome-software currently installs the appstream file org.gnome.Software.Featured.xml
to /usr/share/app-info/xmls
, which means it’s loaded by default by every gnome-software installation on all distros.
Featured and popular app curation should be a per-distro choice. I think it makes sense for gnome-software to ship some defaults, but could they be made easier to override? Carrying a downstream patch forever to prevent the installation of this file doesn’t seem fun.
Could this file perhaps be installed to a location outside /usr/share/app-info/xmls
, for example, but then set as the default value of the external-appstream-uris
GSetting? Or something like that (suggestions welcome). Then it could easily be overridden by distros using established architecture (GSettings override files).