desktop-application-export.md

Desktop application export

rea export-desktop-application <capture-folder> <directory> turns a folder written by desktop application capture into an agentenv bundle holding one computer app environment: the real application, installed from the distribution archive, its vendor's apt repository or the .deb file it was installed from on the ubuntu-24.04 computer base, launched at boot, seeded with the user's state and serving that state through agentenv's data operations.

rea export-desktop-application ./mousepad-capture ./mousepad-bundle
agent-env run ./mousepad-bundle --dry-run

The export reads the capture and its state view; it does not run the application. --name sets the environment name; otherwise it comes from the desktop entry id or the program, with an app- prefix when that name would not be a portable bundle name (for example all digits). The output directory must be new or empty. --task adds a task an agent wrote for the capture, once REA has validated it against the capture; see desktop application tasks. --package-url says where the computer downloads the package of an application installed from a .deb file; see Applications from a .deb file.

The command returns Evidence with operation export_desktop_application and predicate type rea.desktop-application-export, listing the environment name, owned paths, seed files and written files. A failed export, cancellation included, removes the bundle it had not yet published, so no partial copy of the user's data remains. If the bundle was published but its output handles could not be closed, the command reports a cleanup error that carries the export Evidence; the bundle itself is complete.

The bundle

Path	Contents
envs/<name>/env.toml	type = "computer_app", the module and class, computer = "ubuntu-24.04", driver = "reference"
envs/<name>/<file>.py	The ComputerAppEnvironment class
envs/<name>/SKILL.md	What the app is, its window class and where its files live
envs/<name>/seed/	The application's files from before the capture, by home-relative path
envs/<name>/apt-keys/	The signing key of each vendor apt repository the app installs from
envs/<name>/install-package.sh	With --package-url: the run script that installs the downloaded package with dpkg
tasks/smoke.json	A task that deploys the app
tasks/<task>.json	With --task: the agent's task, its verifier in artifacts/ and the eval in evals/
README.md	What was exported, from which capture, and what to keep in mind

The class file is <name>_app.py with hyphens as underscores, for example mousepad_app.py: agentenv imports it under its stem, so a plain <name>.py could shadow a standard library module such as calendar. A class name that would collide with a name the module imports or defines, such as Path, takes an App suffix.

The class declares:

• Packages(apt=[...]) with the package the capture found. A vendor package is named <package>/<release>, its repository's release (the Suite apt reports as a=, or else its Codename), so apt takes it from that repository even when the Ubuntu archive offers a higher version or epoch, as noble's transitional firefox does over packages.mozilla.org's; it is named alone when the release names neither, or when the capture was written before releases were recorded. Its library packages follow, so a package that leaves out dependencies on the libraries it loads, as Typora's Electron package does, still starts; library packages the capture found neither the Ubuntu 24.04 archive nor a declared repository offers are left out, with a limitation. An archive package's declared dependencies are trusted as they are. The package must come from the Ubuntu 24.04 archive or a mirror of it, or from a vendor apt repository whose signing key the capture verified and retained. A source counts as the archive when apt reports its origin as Ubuntu for a noble suite; a capture made before origins were recorded counts only Canonical's own archive hosts.
• For a vendor repository, sources=[AptSource(apt=..., suite=..., components=[...], key="apt-keys/<name>.gpg")], with the retained key copied to that path (.asc when it is armored, which agentenv tells by its content). apt takes one key per URI and suite, so sources that share them, such as one repository listed for two architectures, are declared once, with their components merged; one with a different key is left out. A repository whose key the capture did not verify, an Ubuntu Pro (ESM) repository, one whose sources entry's URI held a user name or password (which the capture did not record and the export never writes; the reason names neither them nor the URI), one not reached over http or https, or one whose arch= restriction leaves out the capture host's architecture is refused with its reason (a capture written before restrictions were recorded counts as unrestricted); when another usable repository lists the same version it is left out instead, with a limitation. The export also refuses snaps, flatpaks, AppImages, and a package no recorded repository lists unless it was installed from a .deb file the capture recorded and --package-url is given, since the computer could not install them by name, and a capture written before credentials were removed whose repository URI still holds them, since it counted that repository's libraries as installable; capture it again.
• @computer_app(supports=...) with both amd64 and arm64 for an archive package, which the archive serves for both, and only the capture host's architecture for a vendor package, since its repository may serve no other. A vendor package captured on any other architecture is refused. A package installed from its .deb file supports only that file's architecture.
• A launch at boot with the captured command, ready when a window of the captured class appears and one of them is listed in the taskbar and is not typed as a splash: a splash screen or a dialog of the class skips the taskbar or says it is a splash, and an app whose splash shows first would otherwise count as ready before its own window opens. Arguments that are the captured home or under it, and <option>=<path> values under it, are respelled under the computer user's $HOME. agentenv starts the app in its own folder, so when an argument, or the program's own path such as ./app, is relative the command first changes to the captured working directory ("$HOME" when that was the home), and still starts if that folder is missing. The export refuses a capture that saw no application window.
• For an Electron application (the capture found its fuse sentinel or a resources/app.asar), --no-sandbox right after the program unless the command already has it: Chromium's sandbox needs user namespaces the computer's container does not grant, and Electron exits without them. The README and the result's limitations say the sandbox is off.
• paths: the state directories holding the application's state files and the folders holding its documents, nested folders collapsed. The home itself and the shared .config, .local, .local/share, .local/state and .cache folders are never owned whole: a file directly in one is owned as itself. Files the capture recorded under a symlinked state directory's physical spelling are mapped back to the innermost such directory's home spelling, unless that spelling is outside the captured home, as when the home itself is a symbolic link. When two files map to one home path, the export uses the one present before the capture, else the first by path, and a limitation names the other.
• Data hooks, because declaring any hook switches off agentenv's default data plane: the class seeds the home once per boot and keeps it as the initial state with keep_initial, data/add and data/reset call agentenv's add and reset, and data/get returns the files under paths plus a data part with a typed JSON view of each, read in a worker thread. An application with no observed state declares no paths and no hooks.

Seeded text files (text, JSON, key files and XML in the state view) have the captured home path respelled to the computer's home wherever it is followed by /, the end of the text, or a character that cannot continue a file name. A UTF-16 file that starts with a byte-order mark and holds the captured home is respelled the same way, keeping its mark; other files are copied as captured. A file under the owned paths whose starting bytes the capture did not retain is not seeded: one in the state view without retained baseline content, or one the capture omitted (for example too large or past the content budget). The result lists them in unseeded_files and the README names them. When the application held files open in folders whose starting content the capture did not retain, a limitation names those folders.

The application's dconf keys at the baseline, if any, are written once when the app first starts, also for an application that owns no files, and the class adds dconf-cli to its apt packages for that. The server starts before the desktop's D-Bus session, so the class does not use dconf load: it dumps any existing user database through a file-db: profile, then runs dconf compile on that dump and the captured keys, in that name order so the captured keys win, and replaces ~/.config/dconf/user. If that fails, the server prints a one-line warning and the app starts without the captured keys. data/reset does not restore them.

Applications from a .deb file

A closed-source application you installed from a .deb file you downloaded, such as VariCAD from varicad.com, is not in any apt repository the computer can use. Capture it with --package-file naming that file (see desktop application capture), then pass --package-url to the export with an http:// or https:// URL the computer can download that same file from:

rea capture-desktop-application --executable varicad --package-file ~/Downloads/varicad2026-en_2.03_amd64.deb --output ./varicad-capture
rea export-desktop-application ./varicad-capture ./varicad-bundle --package-url https://files.example.com/varicad2026-en_2.03_amd64.deb

The class then declares, beside Packages:

• downloads=[Download(url=..., sha256=..., to="vendor/<file>", arch=...)] with the captured file's SHA-256. agentenv downloads the URL once, when the bundle is put, and refuses the file unless its SHA-256 matches, so the computer installs exactly the captured version. The bundle does not contain the package.
• Packages(apt=[...]) with the first alternative of each of the file's Depends and Pre-Depends entries, without version constraints or :any qualifiers, then the library packages the capture found, since a vendor's binary may load libraries its Depends leaves out.
• run=[RunScript(script="install-package.sh")], a script the export writes into the environment folder. agentenv runs it as root from the app's folder once the apt packages are installed and the download is in place, with the network off: it runs dpkg -i on the download and then removes it.

The bundle supports only the file's architecture. Vendor sites often refuse automated downloads, as varicad.com does, so the URL may need to point at a copy you keep, such as a private mirror; you must be allowed to use that copy, and the package's licence, such as a 30-day trial's terms, is yours to check. The README and the result's limitations say so.

The export refuses a package no recorded repository lists when --package-url is missing, saying to capture with --package-file if the capture lacks it. It also refuses --package-url when the capture recorded no package file, giving the capture's package_file_reason when there is one; when the archive or a declared vendor repository installs the package already; when the URL is not written as http:// or https:// or holds a user name or password; and when the file is built for an architecture other than amd64, arm64 or all.

Typed views

The views follow the state view's formats and shapes: SQLite tables (at most 64 ordinary tables, tables_truncated past that, and per table columns, primary_key, at most 500 rows and truncated, with blobs, unsafe integers and text that is not UTF-8 tagged as REA tags them), JSON, XML as {root, truncated} with DOCTYPEs refused and REA's node, depth and whitespace rules, key file groups, and text as {lines, line_count, truncated} split on \n and \r\n. A JSON file holding a number JavaScript cannot read exactly, such as an integer above 2^53, gets an error instead of a view, as in REA, while text that is not one JSON document, such as JSON Lines, stays text. Format detection follows REA's rules. Files larger than 64 MiB get an error instead of a view and are not read. Known differences remain:

• XML names: element and attribute names are Python's {namespace}local spelling rather than REA's prefixed names, namespace declarations are not listed as attributes, and CDATA sections merge with the text around them, so they count as one node.
• dconf databases are reported as binary, since REA reads them with dconf.
• SQLite databases are read in place, read-only, rather than from a staged copy; a write lock the running app holds is waited out for a quarter of a second and then gives the file an error, and so does a table or column name that is not UTF-8.
• JSON nested deeper than Python's recursion limit gives the file an error.

The seed is the user's real data. Keep the bundle local and do not publish it. The class was checked against agentenv-framework 0.9.1431 with python -m agentenv_protocol.computer._declare and agent-env run --dry-run.