photocraft/docs/decisions.md

Implementation decisions

2026-10-13: Editable starter actions (#4779)

PhotoCraft Essentials uses ordinary editable actions. Add the set once after saved actions load, preserving names and order; persist a starter-set version so deleted or renamed actions stay that way. Explicit Load Default Actions adds missing names without replacing edits. Keep headless sessions empty until that command is called. Blur Background uses a single atomic edit on the target pixel layer: detect its subject, exclude subject coverage from Gaussian sampling, and blend the background inside the existing selection while preserving alpha. Detection failure and cancellation do not commit. A recorded Select Subject → Inverse → Blur sequence can act on an old selection when detection finds nothing, so the preset calls this dedicated command instead.

The browser queues generated defaults and their marker for persistence, but only user edits count as unsaved work. Startup writes can be reproduced from the loaded records and built-ins; denied storage alone should not display a loss-of-work banner or block closing a fresh session. Imports and edits to defaults remain unsaved through failed or in-flight transactions until their current contents are committed.

2026-10-10: Smart Object contents identity (#2163)

Smart Object instances carry a document-scoped contents ID separately from their layer ID. Normal duplicates preserve it; New Smart Object via Copy creates a new one. Contents edits update the matching instances together, retaining their individual placement and filters. Copies into another document remap contents IDs as a batch, preserving sharing within the copied layers without joining existing destination objects.

Native files persist this ID. Legacy embedded objects without an ID remain independent: identical file bytes do not prove that two objects were intended to share edits. Legacy nonempty linked paths and PSD source identifiers retain their explicit sharing relationship. PSD export keys embedded sources by contents identity as well as bytes, so independent equal-content objects stay independent.

2026-10-17: keeping a replaced file's ACL and named streams (#7073, #7094, #7096)

Saving replaces a file by renaming a new one over it, which drops everything the old file carried. Carrying the security-relevant parts across needs platform calls that have no safe API in std, and the workspace forbids unsafe, so each platform took a dependency rather than an exception.

macOS ACLs: exacl, not fclonefileat. The two routes that avoid unsafe are a macOS-only exacl dependency (a safe wrapper over acl_get_file/acl_set_file) and fclonefileat with the undocumented-in-rustix CLONE_ACL bit. The clone keeps the ACL, but only on APFS, and it means writing every save as clone-then-truncate-then-write with a fallback for every other file system — restructuring the one write path the whole app's durability rests on, to preserve an ACL. exacl is a best-effort step beside the existing permission copy, it works wherever ACLs do, and a failure cannot affect the bytes.

Windows: ReplaceFileW via winsafe, with a backup name. Copying the Zone.Identifier stream by hand with std would cover the Mark of the Web but not the DACL, and enumerating every stream needs FindFirstStreamW. ReplaceFileW is the call Microsoft documents for the save-through-a-temporary-file pattern and preserves the DACL, named streams, creation time and object identifier in one step; winsafe's kernel feature wraps it safely and pulls in nothing.

The backup-file argument is a correctness requirement, not an option: ReplaceFileW without one documents ERROR_UNABLE_TO_MOVE_REPLACEMENT as leaving the replaced file deleted and the replacement under its temporary name — a failed save that loses the user's document. With a backup name the same failure leaves both files alone, and the one failure that does move things (ERROR_UNABLE_TO_MOVE_REPLACEMENT_2) is unwound in atomic/meta.rs.