Glossary

The project’s canonical glossary, including internal terms, is GLOSSARY.md. This page lists the terms the user documentation relies on.

Active version. The version the install root’s current pointer names. It is only ever the old or the new version of a transaction.

App Bootstrap. The protocol through which the installer asks your application, after a commit or before an uninstall, to perform its own migration. See Installer and App Bootstrap.

Artifact. An immutable file identified by its SHA-256 digest. A component artifact is a tar.zst holding component.json and files/.

Capability. One of the closed set of things the installer can do to a machine: managed files, directories, shortcuts, file associations, services and application registration.

Channel. A signed pointer, stable, beta or nightly, from a channel name to one release.

Commit. The atomic switch of current to the new version; the point of no return of a transaction.

Component. A deployable unit of files with named entrypoints, built into one artifact per platform. It carries no scripts and no absolute paths.

Entrypoint. A named executable inside a component, referenced as <component>.<name> by integrations, App Bootstrap and Portable Run.

Maintainer. The copy of setup kept in maintainer/ of an install root, used for later updates, repairs and uninstalls.

Manifest. The JSON description of one release: product, components, artifacts, integrations, bootstrap.

Offline bundle. A directory with setup and a complete repository, installable without network access.

Portable Run. Running a component from a verified, content-addressed cache without installing it (setup run).

Product. What a user installs: a set of components with an id such as com.example.hello.

Recovery. The step setup runs before anything else, which completes or rolls back an interrupted transaction.

Release sequence. release_sequence, the integer that orders releases and protects against rollback, independent of the application version.

Repository. The signed TUF metadata and content-addressed files that nbpack writes and setup reads.

Scope. user (installed for one user, no elevation) or machine (installed for all users, needs administrator rights).

Staging. The directory where a new version is unpacked before it becomes active.

Transaction. One install, update, repair or uninstall, journaled so that it ends at the old or the new version.

TUF. The Update Framework, the specification Niobium’s repository signing follows. See Trust model.