`libreportal app import-check <file-or-directory>` reports what an import
would do, as one JSON object per file, without touching anything. It runs
the same checks appImport makes — app still shipped, not already
installed, fits on the target, storage location still exists — so a UI can
show them and ask for acceptance before acting.
This is what makes a path-based import safe to drive from the WebUI when
the repository restore is not. A .lpapp is a plain tarball, not encrypted,
so there is no password to collect and nothing secret crosses from the
browser to the host — the blocker recorded in first-run-restore.md §4.1
simply does not apply.
Accepts a single file or a directory of them, so "point at this folder"
works as well as "point at this file".
Verified against real .lpapp files built for the purpose: app name read
from the tar's top-level directory rather than the filename, size read
from the manifest, a location the machine does not have downgraded to a
warning naming the fallback, and refusals for an already-installed app
and a file that is not an export at all.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
`libreportal app export <app>` writes one app to a single file;
`libreportal app import <file>` installs it here. This is the thing the
original request described as "upload or navigate to the backup file" — a
restic repository is not a file, but the want behind the phrasing is real.
The format is deliberately boring: gzipped tar of the app directory with
its .libreportal-manifest.json at the root. That manifest already records
size, images, volumes, databases and storage location, so import reuses
the phase-3 checks for free — refusing an app this version no longer
ships, or one that will not fit, before unpacking anything.
Export stops the app first. A tar of a running Postgres is a corrupt
Postgres, and a file that looks fine until you restore it is worse than a
refusal. tar runs as the owning user with --numeric-owner so container
sub-UIDs survive the round trip instead of being remapped through this
machine's /etc/passwd.
Import re-runs the normal install pipeline after unpacking, because the
compose still carries the SOURCE machine's ports, IPs and domains — that
pipeline is what re-allocates them here, and migrateUrlRewrite fixes the
host-bound CFG_* fields.
Documented throughout as a courier format, not a backup: no history, no
retention, no encryption. Importing under a different name is refused
outright rather than half-working — the CFG_<APP>_* namespace and compose
identities would all need rewriting, and `instance create` already
answers "a second copy".
Fixes a bug this surfaced: _appDirIntended did an indirect expansion on
CFG_<SLUG>_STORAGE without checking <SLUG> can be a variable name, so a
hyphenated or mistyped app name emitted "invalid variable name" and then
reported the misleading "storage location is not mounted" for an app that
simply did not exist.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
