How to properly provide appdata.xml file with autotools?

Question

What is the right way to carry a appdata.xml file with autotools? The documentation says that it should be installed at /usr/share/appdata/%{id}.appdata.xml. Is it the developer or the packager's responsibility?

What about translation? How to make the appdata.xml translatable? The documentation evokes appdata.xml.in but does not give a full example.

Answer 1

Actually, the documentation provides a sample.

In Makefile.am, add

@INTLTOOL_XML_RULE@
appdatadir = $(datarootdir)/appdata
appdata_DATA = $(appdata_in_files:.xml.in=.xml)
appdata_in_files = YOURAPP.appdata.xml.in

CLEANFILES = \
    ...
    $(appdata_DATA) \
    ...

And provides a file YOURAPP.appdata.xml.in with translatable XML tags prefixed with an underscore, for instance <_foobar>translatable text</_foobar>