[Suggestion] add an option to mount the users home directory as an overlay mount

[slartibart70]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
it's not a problem yet, but when i want to test software (esp. GUI apps) then my homedir will be filled with resource files and other stuff (in ~/.local).
These files must be removed manually after the testing - something not really nice since you don't know what those apps did and where they put stuff (files) or where they modified things in home.

Describe the solution you'd like
I could use some overlay-stuff as root, like wrapping my host-homedir with an overlay-fs and using the resulting overlay as an alternative home for distrobox.
But, this needs root (bad for immutable OSes).

podman currently already supports volumes mounted as overlay (:O,upperdir=/some/upper,workdir=/some/work) so why not using this for the home-dir when running distrobox?

If this was exported as distrobox-option (e.g. 'immutable-home=true') with the provisioning of the necessary 'upper' and 'work' dirs, then we would have a bit more isolation, esp. when testing/trying out unknown apps inside distrobox

Any chance to see this in a future release?

[89luca89]

You can also use --home to point $HOME somewhere else and let the test app litter that directory

[slartibart70]

yes, i know of this.

But the point is, i want to have the files of HOME and additionally a protection to not mess with them... as an overlay does
--home does not provide this, because this goes into a separate dir

hence the idea with overlays

[89luca89]

adding --home does not remove access to your original home 👍