Deploy and rollback

Deploy applies a specific commit to your managed paths in $HOME. Rollback re-applies a previous generation.

Plan a deploy

Always preview first:

hometree plan deploy HEAD

The plan shows create, update, and delete actions for managed paths.

Deploy a commit

hometree deploy <rev>

Options:

• --no-backup skips backups entirely.
• --no-secrets skips secrets decryption and secret backups.

Rollback

Rollback uses the generations log (created on deploy) to roll back safely:

hometree rollback --steps 1

Or target a specific commit:

hometree rollback --to <rev>

Backups

During deploy, hometree creates a backup of current managed files unless --no-backup is used.

Secrets backup behavior is controlled by secrets.backup_policy:

• encrypt (default): back up secret plaintexts as ciphertext using age.
• skip: no secret backups.
• plaintext: copy plaintext as-is to the backup directory.

Metadata preservation

• File permissions (exec bit) are preserved from the git tree mode.
• On Unix, uid/gid and mtime are preserved best-effort for existing files.
• Symlinks are recreated as symlinks (never dereferenced).

Safety checks

• Symlink targets are validated to stay under $HOME.
• Deploy refuses to replace directories with files or vice versa.
• Secrets never overwrite directories; existing symlinks are removed before writing files.

Generations log

Each deploy appends an entry to state_dir/generations.jsonl with:

• timestamp
• rev
• host/user
• optional commit message and config hash

See docs/paths.md for the exact state directory location.