Services for libaccounts-glib providers are described with a simple XML file. An example for a hypothetical CoolProvider chat service is shown below:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<service id="coolprovider-chat">
  <type>IM</type>
  <name>CoolProvider Chat</name>
  <description>Chat with your cool friends</description>
  <icon>coolprovider</icon>
  <provider>coolprovider</provider>
  <translations>coolprovider</translations>
  <tags>
    <tag>chat</tag>
  </tags>

  <template>
    <group name="telepathy">
      <setting name="manager">gabble</setting>
      <setting name="protocol">jabber</setting>
    </group>

    <group name="auth">
      <setting name="method">oauth2</setting>
      <setting name="mechanism">user_agent</setting>
      <group name="oauth2/user_agent">
        <setting name="ClientId">ABCDEclient.ID</setting>
      </group>
    </group>
  </template>

</service>

The example service description describes a service called coolprovider-chat, indicated by the id attribute on the service element. The type element corresponds to the service type. The name element contains a human-readable version of the service name. The description is a string that describes the service in general. The icon element specifies a themed icon to represent the service. The provider element must point to the identifier of the provider which supports this service. The translations element is used to indicate the gettext translation domain for the name and description elements, to be used by applications when showing those elements in a UI. The tags element is a container of tag elements, which are used to describe the service in abstract terms. Finally, a template element is a container for group elements, which themselves are containers of setting elements. Settings stored within the template are default settings for the service, which the applications using the account may need in order to function correctly. The default settings can be overriden, typically at run time during the account configuration phase.

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pkg-config --variable=servicefilesdir libaccounts-glib