Restoring After Git Clean

If you run git clean -fd or otherwise lose your overlay files, repoverlay can restore them from its external backup.

Restoring overlays

repoverlay restore

This re-applies all previously applied overlays using the information stored in ~/.local/share/repoverlay/applied/.

Preview before restoring

repoverlay restore --dry-run

How backups work

Tip

Backups are stored outside the git repository, so they survive git clean, branch switches, and other operations that remove untracked files. You don't need to do anything to enable backups — they happen automatically.

Every time an overlay is applied, repoverlay saves a copy of the overlay state to an external backup location outside the git repository.

The external backup stores:

• The overlay name and source
• The list of files and their link types
• Enough information to re-apply the overlay from the original source

For more detail on how state tracking and external backups work, see How It Works.

When to use restore

• After running git clean -fd or git clean -fdx
• After checking out a branch that removes the .repoverlay/ directory
• After any operation that deletes untracked files from the repository