KDE and packageurl

[Aleix Pol]

On Wed, Mar 4, 2026 at 5:46 PM Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> At FOSDEM I talked with someone that is working on packageurl and he suggested
> it would be nice if KDE adopted it.
>
> What is package url?
>
> "PURL introduces a standardized URL-based syntax that uniquely identifies
> software packages"
>
> Example:
>   pkg:deb/debian/curl at 7.50.3-1?arch=i386&distro=jessie
>
> https://packageurl.org/
> https://tc54.org/purl/
> https://github.com/package-url/purl-spec/blob/main/README.md
>
> I guess one should say something like
>   pkg:kde/okukar at 25.12.2?qualifiers
>
> And then for qualifiers we would have to think what to do, do we care only
> about tarballs? Or do we want to include all the binary packages we support? I
> guess if it has to be "unique" it should include the binary packages too.
>
> Do we see any value in adopting it?

>From a Plasma Discover standpoint, we have been using appstream urls
to identify apps. Uses of packages themselves in the software are
slowly getting faded out because they are of little use to end-users.
https://freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/sect-AppStream-Misc-URIHandler.html

In the end, for apps there's normally only one version that matters
which is the stable one and one architecture that matters which is the
one you are running.

It could make sense to offer such package urls I guess, but I don't
really know where though :D. KDE Neon?

Best,
Aleix