How to test appdata for a package?

I' m working on a package for a review and have added what I believe is a good appdata file, at least it passes appdata validation during the build, but how in the heck are you supposed to be able to test what the result will look like in gnome-software? I thought I successfully used gnome-software --prefer-local before but no matter what I do it doesn't find the package. I've even gone as far as to try appstream-util install /path/to/appdata.xml but I'm not sure if that does what I want as the documentation is pretty light for the options. Thanks, Richard