AppStream-1.2.0

[Bruce Dubbs]

New minor version.

[Joe Locash]

Version 1.2.0
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Released: 2026-08-28

Notes:
 * This release marks the libappstream-compose API as stable.

 * This release introduces a new, lightly sandboxed (on Linux) media worker for appstream-compose
   and switches to VIPS for image processing. Please report any issues you may find! The sandbox
   can be disabled by setting `ASC_NO_SANDBOX=1` in the environment.
   The image formats XPM, TIFF and BMP will no longer be read by Compose, and will be rejected
   unconditionally.

 * This release introduces <heading>My headline!</heading> markup for AppStream descriptions.
   Older versions will remove this markup, so only use it if your target clients have a recent
   version of AppStream.

Features:
 * compose: Create AscMedia for isolated out-of-process media handling using asc-mediaworker
 * compose: Process images, fonts & videos via the media worker
 * Generalize path segment validation, use it in the compose media worker
 * compose: Switch from using GdkPixbuf to VIPS for image processing
 * compose: Harmonize supported formats, don't read XPM/TIFF/BMP
 * compose: Make JPEG-XL the default image output format
 * compose: Implement basic support for FreeBSD
 * compose: Rely on VIPS for SVG support, drop our dedicated librsvg path
 * compose: Make image-targets and image batch-processing public API
 * compose: Expose the source-icon convention and a hint-tag lookup as public API
 * compose: Drop unstable-API marker
 * compose: Don't create image thumbnails that aren't a substantially smaller
 * compose: Only transfer pre-opened fds and no more directory fd to the worker
 * compose: Implement a basic sandbox for the mediaworker using Landlock
 * compose: Use RESTRICT_SELF_TSYNC and block UDP access on newer Landlock
 * compose: Mix the output image format type into the GCID
 * compose: Make AscUnit a proper abstract class
 * compose: Improve API documentation
 * Always sanitize whitespaces in keywords and drop empty ones
 * Assume a language element without percentage means full translation
 * news-to-metainfo: Support a details URL in the YAML variant
 * news-convert: Support inline Markdown in news text
 * news-convert: Support headers in XML<->YAML/NEWS/Markdown conversions
 * ascli: news-convert: Support standalone release XML as source/target
 * Whitespace-sanitize all description markup we read
 * Output descriptions as literals in YAML and wrap markup ourselves

Specification:
 * docs: Document the appstreamcli news file conversion helper
 * Implement support for headings in description markup

Bugfixes:
 * meson: Set _POSIX_C_SOURCE on Linux only
 * compose: Fix a race where units were deleting each other's icon directories
 * compose: Fix documentation and introspection annotation issues
 * compose: Drop dead public API, make some API private
 * compose: Sharpen with libvips instead of a hand-rolled unsharp mask
 * compose: Only read AVIF from HEIF containers, never HEIC
 * compose: Fix double-free crash when processing fonts
 * compose: Guard against bad locale in path names
 * compose: Ensure component-IDs are safe to use in filesystem paths
 * compose: Escape values for HTML reports, and create proper plain-text if needed
 * compose: Make missing-launchable-desktop-file an error
 * Fix a few translator hints that weren't picked up properly
 * Don't accept empty strings as URLs
 * its: Fix description inline markup translation for release data
 * validator: Fix improper use of variadic arguments
 * validator: Properly validate component-IDs with random UTF-8 characters
 * validator: Abort ID validation after the first invalid character
 * pool: Resolve crash if data locations are changed on a loaded pool
 * Fix wrong string comparison when detecting arm64 machines
 * ascli: Resolve crash when selection is cancelled in install/remove
 * Fix another crash when converting invalid description markup to Markdown
 * apt: Treat icon tarballs as hostile, instead of trusted
 * apt: Fix empty-directory check nuking the icon cache on every refresh
 * utils: Ensure we never ever follow symlinks when recursively deleting caches
 * xml: Only emit description enumerations for locales that are in them
 * cache: Never infinite-recurse when resolving addons for a component
 * yaml: Don't leave old header data around when parsing multiple YAML catalogs

Miscellaneous:
 * ci: fedora: Disable cisco-openh264 repo, it's currently broken on rawhide
 * compose: Stop leaking private symbols out of the shared library
 * compose: Make hint tag/severity/explanation setters private API
 * compose: Seal the global settings explicitly on start
 * news-convert: Refactor conversion code for better readability
 * ascli: Refactor subcommand dispatch
 * meson: Disable analyzer-infinite-loop more broadly for static analysis

Fixed at 2129ecae76.