diff --git a/src/backend/interfacedescriptor.h b/src/backend/interfacedescriptor.h
index 468bd2e80..513a783a7 100644
--- a/src/backend/interfacedescriptor.h
+++ b/src/backend/interfacedescriptor.h
@@ -23,17 +23,51 @@
 
 #include "backend/interface.h"
 
+
 /**
- * WIP: interface descriptor, needs some generic metadata interface
+ * Release state of an interface implementation.
+ * The interfase subsystem must be able to categorize implementation to present possible
+ * upgrade paths to the user. This is done by the tagging it to a certain state in concert
+ * with the version and the user supplied version compare function. The respective numbers
+ * are choosen in a way that a higher value indicates precedence when selecting an implementation.
+ * Note that 'BETA' is higher than 'DEPRECATED' (we make the assumption that BETA is at least
+ * maintained code and something gets deprecated for some reason), for common practice it is still
+ * suggested to make a stable release before declaring its predcessor version as deprecated.
+ */
+enum lumiera_interface_state {
+  /** some known bugs exist which won't be fixed, don't use this */
+  LUMIERA_INTERFACE_BROKEN = -1,
+  /** Not finished development code */
+  LUMIERA_INTERFACE_EXPERIMENTAL = 0,
+  /** Old implementation which is now unmaintained and will be removed soon */
+  LUMIERA_INTERFACE_DEPRECATED = 1,
+  /** Finished but not finally released implementation for open testing */
+  LUMIERA_INTERFACE_BETA = 2,
+  /** Finished, released and maintained implementation */
+  LUMIERA_INTERFACE_STABLE = 3
+};
+
+
+/**
+ * Interface descriptor.
+ * This defines an interface for querying metadata common to all interface implementations
  */
 LUMIERA_INTERFACE_DECLARE (lumieraorg_interfacedescriptor, 0,
                            /* The following slots are some human-readable descriptions of certain properties */
                            LUMIERA_INTERFACE_SLOT (const char*, name, (LumieraInterface)),
+                           LUMIERA_INTERFACE_SLOT (const char*, brief, (LumieraInterface)),
+                           LUMIERA_INTERFACE_SLOT (const char*, homepage, (LumieraInterface)),
                            LUMIERA_INTERFACE_SLOT (const char*, version, (LumieraInterface)),
                            LUMIERA_INTERFACE_SLOT (const char*, author, (LumieraInterface)),
+                           LUMIERA_INTERFACE_SLOT (const char*, email, (LumieraInterface)),
                            LUMIERA_INTERFACE_SLOT (const char*, copyright, (LumieraInterface)),
-                           LUMIERA_INTERFACE_SLOT (const char*, license, (LumieraInterface))
-                           /* TODO add more things here, dependencies, provisions etc */
+                           LUMIERA_INTERFACE_SLOT (const char*, license, (LumieraInterface)),
+
+                           /* some flags for properties */
+                           LUMIERA_INTERFACE_SLOT (int, state, (LumieraInterface)),
+
+                           /* compare 2 version strings in a custom way */
+                           LUMIERA_INTERFACE_SLOT (int, versioncmp, (const char*, const char*))
                            );