[Lvfs-announce] Identifying a release using a vendor specific tag

[Lvfs-announce] Identifying a release using a vendor specific tag

[Richard Hughes]

Hi all,

A few vendors use a vendor specific text tag to identify a specific
firmware release. For instance, Lenovo use an ID like N1NET43W to
identify a firmware, in addition to the model and the version on their
homepage. I have struggled to work out the mapping between real
versions and "alternate names" in the past and I think that the LVFS
can do a much better job at managing this kind of metadata.

I've just deployed onto the LVFS server some new functionality that
allows the vendor to define an optional "release tag" in the web
console and/or in the metainfo.xml file itself. This new attribute is
documented here https://www.fwupd.org/lvfs/docs/metainfo/style but the
basic idea is that you can change the template for the metainfo.xml
file from:

    <release version="1.2.3" date="2019-07-02">

to:

    <release version="1.2.3" date="2019-07-02" tag="N1NET43W">

If this feature is widely used, I'll make the release tag more
prominently shown in the LVFS, and also allow end users to search for
a specific release using the tag name. If desired, we can even include
this release tag in the fwupdmgr and UI too

There is no immediate requirement for this extra metadata, although it
would be really helpful if it was provided for future uploads if this
is relevant to you. If anyone has any specific questions or concerns
then please reply off-list. Thanks.

Richard