sharing-a-stack.md

Export and import a stack

StaXX guide › Export and import a stack

Your compose file holds things that belong only to you: passwords, keys, your own folder paths. Export makes a copy with those taken out, and leaves your own stack untouched.

1. Open the menu

Right-click a stack's row and choose Export…. See the stack list for the rest of that menu.

2. Choose what goes

The first screen lists every file in the stack's folder.

Kind	What happens
Compose file	Always goes. Cannot be unticked. Its settings can be blanked one at a time.
.env file	Same as the compose file — names and values, so it can be blanked entry by entry.
Other text file	Must be read on screen before it can be ticked.
Icon	Ticked already, if the stack has one. Untick it to leave it out.
Refused	Keys, certificates, anything not text, anything too large, folders, links. Listed with the reason. No tick.

A file the compose file needs is marked. That mark never turns a refused file into an allowed one.

Reading a file: lines that look like they carry something private are marked. This only ever means "look here". It never means the rest of the file is safe. The judgement stays with you.

Blanking values

Below the file list is every setting in the compose file. Anything the file already marks as secret — see marking a value sensitive — is ticked for you. Paths start unticked; whether a folder name gives something away is your call.

Tick the .env file and its entries join the list, all ticked.

3. Check what is about to leave

Press Next. Nothing is written yet.

Section	Shows
Going	Every file that will leave.
Left behind, and why	Every file staying, with a reason.
Values blanked	Every setting that will be replaced.

This screen also marks the values you ticked as secret in your own stack too. It only marks compose settings — a .env file has nowhere to keep that mark.

4. Press Export

What you sent	What you get
Just the compose file	Downloads as plain text — paste it anywhere.
More than one file	Downloads as a single .staxx file — an ordinary zip, rename it to .zip to look inside.

This is how you hand a stack over. The person who receives it can drop the file straight onto their own stack list to bring it in — see Import a bundle below.

The exported file

A blanked value becomes REPLACE-ME — never a value that looks real. Replace every REPLACE-ME value before you start the stack; StaXX names which settings still need one.

A note is written into the compose file itself, as comments at the top: what it is, when it was made, which stack it came from, every value blanked, and every file left behind and why. No machine name, no username, no address. Delete the note once nothing still reads REPLACE-ME.

Everything else survives untouched — comments, blank lines, the order you wrote it in. It is your real file with holes punched in it, not one rebuilt from scratch.

The person who receives it fills those holes in through the stack editor. For a value that needs a real password, see making a password or passphrase.

The icon

Export includes each service's icon from the stack's .staxx folder, and nothing else from that folder.

Import a bundle

Drag a .staxx file onto the stack list and drop it. Drop it on a folder to land there; drop it on a stack to join that stack's folder; drop it anywhere else to land at the top level.

Nothing is written on drop. You get a preview first — what it holds, where it will land, what it will be called, and the sender's note listing every value to fill in. Press Import and the stack appears, stopped, still holding its REPLACE-ME values.

If the name is already used, choose another. Every part of a bundle is checked before anything is unpacked, and anything outside the shapes StaXX allows is refused, with a reason. Nothing in a bundle can reach outside the new stack's own folder, and nothing it claims about its own past is believed.

To do it by hand instead, make a new stack and paste the compose text in.

Terms used here

Any word you are not sure of is in the glossary.

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