I've been thinking about how to improve the developer experience for publishing new apps, and one of the things that came up is the disconnect between appstream and desktop files. While appstream has most of the data needed for app store listings, there are some properties that are duplicated in the desktop file (e.g. name, summary, binary), and some that exist only in the desktop file (e.g. app icon, categories).

From a new developer point of view this is quite confusing, and it means there isn't a single place where you can set up everything that determines the appearance of the app in app stores.

A potential solution could be to add the few missing things to appstream, and then generate the desktop file on build using that information (at least by default in our project templates in GNOME Builder). App icon and categories are the most prominent things missing in appstream at the moment, so maybe a good first step could be adding those?

Edit: What I'd like to work towards is a single UI with live preview for how an app will appear in app stores (mockup).