Charm visibility on Charmhub + Tags & Categories

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Hi everyone :wave:

There has been a little confusion around the evolution of tags and categories as we’ve moved through various iterations of charm frameworks, stores and metadata. Following some discussion this week, we’ve had a sync up with the relevant parties involved and come to some decisions.

tl;dr

  • Charms are not visible in the Charmhub search by default (request this in a Discourse post)
  • Categories are not yet user-assignable (request category assignment in a Discourse post)
  • Tags are deprecated for both charms and bundles
  • The categories and tags field are deprecated from the metadata.yaml spec

Please use the Charmhub Requests Category for any such requests.

Charm Visibility on Charmhub

If you publish a charm on Charmhub using charmcraft, your charm will be visible at https://charmhub.io/<charm-name> (where the charm name is that specified in the name field of your metadata.yaml). By default, you charm will not be visible by default in search results, nor will it be categorised.

If you would like your charm to be visible in search results on Charmhub, please create a post on Discourse requesting that your charm be visible in search.

Tags and Categories

Both of these fields have been a no-op to Charmhub from the beginning. From this point forward, please consider these fields deprecated from the metadata.yaml spec. This decision has been made because such data is the concern of the store and not the charm.

That said, categories can be a boon for the discoverability of charms. We’re not deprecating the idea of categories in the store, just the field in metadata.yaml. We are completely deprecating support for tags.

If you’d like your charm to be added to a category, please create a Discourse post requesting that your charm be added to a specific category, or set of categories.

A UI will follow to make this process easier, similar to the UI for adding snaps to a category on the Snap Store. For now, please use Discourse threads, and if you have any issues or require any assistance, reach out on the Charmhub Mattermost.

Supported Categories

The currently supported list of categories is:

  • AI/ML
  • Big Data
  • Cloud
  • Containers
  • Databases
  • Logging and Tracing
  • Monitoring
  • Networking
  • Security
  • Storage
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