Installed-files¶

The installed-files store what links were created by uberdot. This document explains how they are structured and how you can fix those files if a critical unexpected error occurs.

Structure¶

Installed-files are JSON files that are stored in data/installed/. If you use the --save flag you can set the name of the installed file that uberdot should use otherwise default.json is used.

This is a example of such a installed-file.

{
    "@version": "1.5.0_3",
    "Main": {
        "name": "Main",
        "links": [
            {
                "target": "/home/user/repos/dotfiles/files/tmux.conf",
                "name": "/home/user/tmux.conf",
                "uid": 1000,
                "gid": 100,
                "permission": 644,
                "date": "2018-11-28 11:06:14"
            },
            {
                "target": "/home/user/repos/dotfiles/files/termite.conf",
                "name": "/home/user/.config/termite/config",
                "uid": 1000,
                "gid": 100,
                "permission": 644,
                "date": "2018-11-28 11:06:14"
            },
            {
                "target": "/home/user/repos/dotfiles/files/antergos%pacman.conf",
                "name": "/etc/pacman.conf",
                "uid": 0,
                "gid": 0,
                "permission": 644,
                "date": "2019-01-02 09:03:33"
            }
        ],
        "installed": "2018-11-28 11:06:14",
        "updated": "2019-01-02 09:03:33"
    },
    "Git": {
        "name": "Git",
        "links": [
            {
                "target": "/home/user/repos/dotfiles/files/work%gitconfig",
                "name": "/home/user/.gitconfig",
                "uid": 1000,
                "gid": 100,
                "permission": 644,
                "date": "2018-11-28 11:06:14"
            },
            {
                "target": "/home/user/repos/dotfiles/files/gitconfig_system",
                "name": "/etc/gitconfig",
                "uid": 0,
                "gid": 0,
                "permission": 644,
                "date": "2018-11-28 11:06:14"
            }
        ],
        "installed": "2018-11-28 11:06:14",
        "updated": "2018-11-28 11:06:14",
        "parent": "Main"
    }
}

As you can see it stores a JSON Object with a @version key and a key for every installed profile. Generally keys that start with “@” are reserved special keys (but at the moment only the version key exists) and all other keys are the names of installed profiles.

@version key¶

The version key is important because uberdot will compare it to its own version and will refuse to read the installed-file if the installed file schema version (the number after the underscore) does not match its own installed-file schema version.

Profile keys¶

For every profile that is installed there exists a key. It stores a dictionary with the following keys:

name: The name of the profile
parent: If the profile is a subprofile this key contains the name of the parent (super) profile, otherwise the key doesn’t exist
installed: The date of the first installation
updated: The date of the last modification
links: Contains a list of all installed links by this profile

links key¶

The links key in a profile contains a list of all installed links. For each link there is a dictionary storing the following information:

target: The absolut path to to the dotfile in your repo
name: The absolute path of the symlink
uid: The userid of the link owner
gid: The groupid of the link owner
permission: The permission of the target
date: The date of the last modification

Installed-file is corrupted¶

This should actually never happen and if it does please create a bug ticket so we can make sure that this won’t happen again. But it is possible -in very early versions of uberdot this happened a lot- that an unexpected error occurs during the linking process. For those cases uberdot creates a backup of the installed-file before modifying it. You will need to look into the backup and the modified version and verify that all removals/additions/updates were really written to the filesystem. When you are certain that the current installed-file matches the state of your filesystem you can remove the backup file and use uberdot again.

Version update¶

uberdot refuses to read the installed-file if the installed-file schema version does not match it’s own version. This can happen when you update uberdot and have an old installed-file left on your device. To circumvent this issue you have two opportunities:

Revert to an old version of uberdot, uninstall all profiles, update uberdot, install all uninstalled profiles again
Look into the changes of the installed-file schema, update the installed-file manually, increment the version number