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Deploying configuration

This chapter is for system administrators who deploy flatpak applications and their configuration data.

For automated deployment of flatpak apps, you can call flatpak install as you normally would.

To deploy an application's configuration, follow the instructions in this chapter.

Configuration locations

Normally, applications follow the XDG Base Directory Specification <https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html> and are expected to place files in the paths passed to them in the environment variables $XDG_DATA_HOME, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, $XDG_STATE_HOME, $XDG_CACHE_HOME.

Outside of flatpak, the default values for those variables are as follows:

  • XDG_DATA_HOME = ~/.local/share - user-specific data files.
  • XDG_CONFIG_HOME = ~/.config - user-specific configuration files.
  • XDG_STATE_HOME = ~/.local/state - user-specific data files.
  • XDG_CACHE_HOME = ~/.cache - user-specific, non-essential cached data.

While running as a flatpak, however, the variables are set as follows. If the app is called org.example.AppName, then the variables will be:

  • XDG_DATA_HOME = ~/.var/app/org.example.AppName/data
  • XDG_CONFIG_HOME = ~/.var/app.org.example.AppName/config
  • XDG_STATE_HOME = ~/.var/app/org.example.AppName/.local/state
  • XDG_CACHE_HOME = ~/.var/app/org.example.AppName/cache

To maintain files in a configuration management system so that they can be deployed later, you should pay special attention to the XDG_CONFIG_HOME locations for applications.

Applications that save user-created data may do so in XDG_DATA_HOME; this should be part of your backups.

Note that not all applications have a clean separation between configuration and state. You may want to see what each application puts in XDG_CONFIG_HOME versus XDG_STATE_HOME to decide what to persist.

Overrides

Users may run flatpak override or a tool like com.github.tchx84.Flatseal to add or remove permissions from an application. These modifications are called overrides.

  • App-specific overrides go in a file called .local/share/flatpak/overrides/org.example.AppName
  • Global overrides apply to all applications and go in a file called .local/share/flatpak/overrides/global

Both kinds of overrides can be persisted in a configuration management system.