Premise

This catalog is the frontend of the AM package manager. The app pages are generated from the files in the apps/ folder, which are kept in sync with AM's application list every 30 minutes by a GitHub Actions workflow.

The category pages and app pages are built by the pla-site-tool generator and deployed with another workflow on every push to main.

Any app that is not listed in AM will be automatically removed from this catalog!
However, you are allowed to add icons and edit the app files of existing apps, and to contribute to the website itself.

Adding an app

• Open an issue or a pull request at https://github.com/ivan-hc/AM
• Once the app is in the x86_64-apps list, the sync workflow creates a matching file in apps/ with its description and sites
• The site is rebuilt and the new page appears automatically

Removing an app

• Open an issue or a pull request at https://github.com/ivan-hc/AM
• The sync workflow removes its file from apps/
• The icon is retained in case the application is added again in the future (use the "Remove icons" workflow to clean up orphans)

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Contributing

This catalog is for everyone, so anyone can make a pull request.

Improve an app's page

Each app's data lives in a plain text file in the apps/ folder, named after the app (all lowercase). The format is documented in apps/.template:

# some app

===
description of your app, between the `===` lines.
only use **bold**, *italic*, ++underline++, lists markdown here
- do not add links or images here
- use SOURCES field if you package someone else's app
===

# SCREENSHOTS: https://Portable-Linux-Apps.github.io/contribute_ss.webp
# SITES: https://someapp.io
# SOURCES: https://github.com/name/someapp-appimage
# BUTTONS: Label_of_Button::https://discord.gg Donation_Link::https://someapp.io/donate

• The # name line and the description between === come from the AM list; you can improve them.
• SCREENSHOTS — a space separated list of image URLs, shown in the gallery of the app page.
• SITES — space separated site URLs that provide the AppImage.
• SOURCES — if you are packaging someone else's app, link the git repo(s) here.
• BUTTONS — space separated button definitions in the form of Button_Title::URL, e.g. a donation link.

Add icons

• Icons must be in PNG format and have the same name as the app (for example, the app tizio will have the icon icons/tizio.png, all lowercase)
• Icons must be 128x128 pixels or smaller
• At the time of site deployment, they are converted to WebP (and to a 48x48 variant for the lists) for better website performance, the PNG stays the only source of truth

Contribute to the website itself

The static pages those files are generated from can be edited freely:

• index.in — home page template (hero, install carousel, categories, about, FAQ)
• apps.in, wiki.in — apps list and wiki templates
• app_page.in, cat_page.in, metapkg_page.in — templates used to generate app pages, category pages, and metapackage pages
• assets/css/, assets/js/ — styles and scripts
• pla-site.toml — site configuration, including the regex patterns that assign apps to categories
• apps/.template — the template shown to contributors

Translations

The site supports multiple languages using gettext .po files. Translatable strings in templates are marked with _("text").

Directory structure:

locales/
├── pla-site.pot          # Translation template
├── en/
│   └── pla-site.po       # English translations (source language)
├── it/
│   └── pla-site.po       # Italian translations
└── <lang>/
    └── pla-site.po       # Other languages

How to add a new language:

1. Create the directory structure: mkdir -p locales/<lang>
2. Copy the template: cp locales/pla-site.pot locales/<lang>/pla-site.po
3. Edit the .po file and fill in msgstr for each msgid
4. Add the language code to languages in pla-site.toml:

   languages = ["en", "it", "<lang>"]

5. Build the site — output goes to public/<lang>/

Notes:

• English (en) is the source language; its .po file has msgstr equal to msgid
• Leave msgstr "" empty to use the original English text
• HTML markup inside _("...") is preserved in translations
• Template variables like $CAT_NAME are not translated — they're replaced at build time
• Category names (AppImages, AI, Audio, etc.) are not translated — they're kept as-is across languages
• Important: Always use straight quotes (") in .po files, never curly/Unicode quotes (" "). Curly quotes will cause translations to silently fail (the entry won't be found). This commonly happens when copying text from web pages or word processors.

Updating translations:

1. Regenerate the .pot files: ./pla-site-tool --extract-pot --pla-dir .
2. Merge changes into each .po file, preserving existing translations:

   msgmerge --update locales/<lang>/pla-site.po locales/pla-site.pot

   This adds new untranslated entries, removes obsolete ones, and marks changed entries as fuzzy. Use --no-fuzzy-matching to skip fuzzy matching if you don't want it.
3. Edit the .po file and translate new/changed msgstr entries
4. Validate syntax: msgfmt --check locales/<lang>/pla-site.po -o /dev/null

Removing a language:

1. Delete the .po file: rm locales/<lang>/pla-site.po
2. Remove the language code from languages in pla-site.toml
3. The public/<lang>/ output directory will no longer be generated

Build locally

The static.yml workflow builds and deploys the site, but you can also build it locally:

# download the generator
wget -O pla-site-tool "https://github.com/kazam0180/portable-apps/releases/download/pla-site-tool-0.2.3/pla-site-tool_0.2.3-x86_64.AppImage"
chmod +x pla-site-tool

./pla-site-tool          # generates the site into public/
./gen_sitemap public https://portable-linux-apps.github.io sitemap.xml
./convert_icons public    # requires ImageMagick (sudo apt install imagemagick)
./minify public           # requires esbuild

Note: public/ is the build output and is gitignored. The build generates per-language output directories (e.g., public/en/, public/it/) based on the languages setting in pla-site.toml.

Regenerate the translation template

When you add or change translatable strings (_("...")) in the templates, regenerate the .pot files:

./pla-site-tool --extract-pot --pla-dir .

This scans all .in templates and writes locales/pla-site.pot.

Then merge the updated .pot into each language's .po file to pick up new/changed strings while preserving existing translations:

# For each language:
msgmerge --update locales/<lang>/pla-site.po locales/pla-site.pot

This will:

• Add new untranslated entries
• Mark changed entries as fuzzy
• Preserve all existing msgstr translations
• Remove entries no longer in the .pot file

After merging, edit the .po files to fill in translations for any new entries and review any fuzzy matches.

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Conclusion

If you are able to open an issue here, it means you have a GitHub account, and therefore you can make a pull request yourself — or ask for help:

• Check the wiki first
• Open an issue at https://github.com/ivan-hc/AM
• Join the pkgforge Discord

You are strongly encouraged to actively participate in this project!