CLI Plugins not being restored anymore.

[Gacko]

Description

From time to time I'm clearing the .docker directory in my home directory. This never caused any issues in the past and, from my point of view, should just lead to Docker Desktop re-initializing these contents as if it was a fresh installation.

With Docker Desktop v4.38 and before, this worked just fine and everything still worked as expected after clearing the directory and restarting Docker Desktop.

Since v4.39 some contents, especially the cli-plugins, are no longer getting restored to factory defaults anymore, even when I use "Reset to factory defaults" in the troubleshooting menu.

This leads to commands being driven by such CLI plugins to no longer work with v4.39 after clearing the .docker directory. As stated before, v4.38 just recreated all the symlinks in the cli-plugins directory inside the .docker directory inside my home directory and these plugins therefore continued to work.

Reproduce

1. Install Docker Desktop for Mac v4.39.
2. Configure everything as you wish.
3. Run docker buildx --help to verify the buildx plugin is working.
4. Quit the Docker Desktop app via the tray icon.
5. Remove all the contents of the .docker directory in your home directory.
6. Start Docker Desktop again.
7. Check docker buildx --help again to see it's no longer working.

Expected behavior

IMHO it should be possible to throw away the user configuration in the .docker directory inside your home directory at any time and Docker Desktop should recreate it as it did in v4.38.

docker version

Client:
 Version:           28.0.1
 API version:       1.48
 Go version:        go1.23.6
 Git commit:        068a01e
 Built:             Wed Feb 26 10:38:16 2025
 OS/Arch:           darwin/arm64
 Context:           desktop-linux

Server: Docker Desktop 4.39.0 (184744)
 Engine:
  Version:          28.0.1
  API version:      1.48 (minimum version 1.24)
  Go version:       go1.23.6
  Git commit:       bbd0a17
  Built:            Wed Feb 26 10:40:57 2025
  OS/Arch:          linux/arm64
  Experimental:     false
 containerd:
  Version:          1.7.25
  GitCommit:        bcc810d6b9066471b0b6fa75f557a15a1cbf31bb
 runc:
  Version:          1.2.4
  GitCommit:        v1.2.4-0-g6c52b3f
 docker-init:
  Version:          0.19.0
  GitCommit:        de40ad0

docker info

Client:
 Version:    28.0.1
 Context:    desktop-linux
 Debug Mode: false

Server:
 Containers: 0
  Running: 0
  Paused: 0
  Stopped: 0
 Images: 0
 Server Version: 28.0.1
 Storage Driver: overlay2
  Backing Filesystem: extfs
  Supports d_type: true
  Using metacopy: false
  Native Overlay Diff: true
  userxattr: false
 Logging Driver: json-file
 Cgroup Driver: cgroupfs
 Cgroup Version: 2
 Plugins:
  Volume: local
  Network: bridge host ipvlan macvlan null overlay
  Log: awslogs fluentd gcplogs gelf journald json-file local splunk syslog
 CDI spec directories:
  /etc/cdi
  /var/run/cdi
 Swarm: inactive
 Runtimes: io.containerd.runc.v2 runc
 Default Runtime: runc
 Init Binary: docker-init
 containerd version: bcc810d6b9066471b0b6fa75f557a15a1cbf31bb
 runc version: v1.2.4-0-g6c52b3f
 init version: de40ad0
 Security Options:
  seccomp
   Profile: unconfined
  cgroupns
 Kernel Version: 6.10.14-linuxkit
 Operating System: Docker Desktop
 OSType: linux
 Architecture: aarch64
 CPUs: 8
 Total Memory: 7.654GiB
 Name: docker-desktop
 ID: d7e41cfb-280d-40b9-8334-15fa682d6251
 Docker Root Dir: /var/lib/docker
 Debug Mode: false
 HTTP Proxy: http.docker.internal:3128
 HTTPS Proxy: http.docker.internal:3128
 No Proxy: hubproxy.docker.internal
 Labels:
  com.docker.desktop.address=unix:///Users/marco/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker/Data/docker-cli.sock
 Experimental: false
 Insecure Registries:
  hubproxy.docker.internal:5555
  ::1/128
  127.0.0.0/8
 Live Restore Enabled: false

Diagnostics ID

E97E0B00-5FD6-4827-BFCE-967712AD9640/20250312145824

Additional Info

No response