dsh-update-checker

dsh-update-checker

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A permanent Cordis plugin for the DeepSeek Harness Web GUI that auto-checks for new DeepSeek Harness releases and installed third-party plugin updates (the former standalone dsh-plugin-checker was merged in v1.1.0), asks the user, and one-click updates with success/failure feedback.

Features

• Full update lifecycle — check, backup, update, rollback, and restart, all in one plugin.
• Main program check — compares the installed @deepseek-ai/dsh against the npm latest (full packument, stable-first, semver-aware). A pre-release target is installed only when it belongs to the channel the deployment already follows — a cross-channel promotion (rc → alpha) is refused with E_PRERELEASE unless you enable the allowPrerelease setting, so the checker never promotes the harness into an unintended pre-release channel.
• Third-party plugin check — scans installed non-official plugins (layout-agnostic, incl. pnpm-hoisted node_modules), cross-compares each against npm + GitHub (target = higher version); local tools with no publish source go to ignored. When a plugin name has multiple copies, the one in the composition-owning profile's node_modules wins (the rest are listed as copies), and each plugin can be excluded from prompts (excludedPlugins, re-enableable in the settings page).
• Working GitHub channel — dedicated HTTPS client for GitHub domains (tolerates self-signed local proxies; the npm registry still uses strict TLS), with redirects, size caps and timeouts; codeload tarballs are validated before install.
• In-GUI banner — locale-aware (zh/en follows the DSH UI language), states update / up-to-date / failure, with a suppression flag and a change brief (vX→vY + risk level + release notes when available).
• One-click update with safety — main program: dry-run guard (abort if the plan contains remove) → snapshot backup (version manifests + a main-snapshot copy of the @deepseek-ai tree for offline rollback) → layout-adaptive install (in-place or -g) → post-install check installed==latest; plugins: temp-dir install + copy, dependency version reconciliation, auto --allow-scripts for native deps on npm ≥ 12. Updates (and rollbacks) persist to the profile package.json + lockfile (pnpm install --lockfile-only / npm install --package-lock-only), so a later install never silently reverts the plugin — no more "same plugin keeps asking for the same update" loops.
• Real rollback — main program via POST /rollback, plugins via POST /plugin-rollback; GET /backups.json lists both.
• Restart with watchdog — launcher derived from the current process argv, kill by PID + port, recovery confirmed by port listening, an HTTP 200 probe (GET /restart-status.json) and a new instance id read back from this plugin's own routes, so "something answers on the port" is no longer mistaken for "the updated build came up".
• Write-route security — all write routes require { "confirm": true } and a loopback source (127.0.0.1/::1), so LAN clients can't trigger update/restart/rollback.
• Zero-config portability — profile dir / composition file / deploy root are derived from the plugin's own install location, while state, backups and logs honour DSH_HOME (then ~/.dsh); works on any machine without editing code.
• Self-mounting on dsh 0.1.6-alpha.2+ — that release switched the profile resolution default from "link" to "runtime", which stops a third-party plugin in $DSH_HOME/profiles/node_modules from resolving and kills the launch with ERR_MODULE_NOT_FOUND before the server binds. The plugin now re-establishes its own mount at startup (ensurePluginMount): a junction from every profile's node_modules to the real package, plus the dependencies declaration each profile needs so ownership is recognised. Idempotent, never overwrites a spec you set deliberately, never deletes a directory it cannot prove is its own copy; mount.json / status.json report the state.

Host & Client

• Host (lib/index.js) — HTTP routes: status.json (check), mount.json (self-mount state), suppress, update (with dry preview), rollback, backups.json, restart, restart-status.json, plugins.json, plugin-update, plugin-rollback, plugin-exclude.
• Client (lib/client.js) — renders two banners in the root shell.overlay slot: a core banner (main-program update state) and a plugin banner (updatable plugins with single / update-all buttons). Both check on page load, then every 6 hours; the settings page ("检查更新") adds rollback buttons.

Install & mount

The package is a profile bundle (its manifest declares dsh.bundle.patch).

# 1) put the package into $DSH_HOME/profiles/node_modules/ so the profile can resolve it.
#    ⚠️ Never run `npm install` directly inside $DSH_HOME/profiles — it has no
#    package.json and npm would prune the whole node_modules (data loss).
#    Safe option A — install in a temp dir, then copy only this package:
npm i dsh-update-checker --prefix <temp-dir> --no-save
cp -r <temp-dir>/node_modules/dsh-update-checker $DSH_HOME/profiles/node_modules/
#    Safe option B — copy the package directory manually (git clone or tarball).

# 2) add the row to $DSH_HOME/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml

# $DSH_HOME/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml
- insert:
    - id: dsh-update-checker
      name: 'dsh-update-checker'

dsh 0.1.6-alpha.2 and later: the profile needs its own link

Step 1 alone is no longer enough. 0.1.6-alpha.2 changed the profile module-resolution default from "link" to "runtime", which turns $DSH_HOME/profiles/node_modules into a shared managed directory that dsh excludes from Node's native resolve. It now only serves the deployment dependency closure and the selected bundle closure (see PluginPackages / routeScoped in @deepseek-ai/dsh-app-boot), and a third-party plugin belongs to neither — so the bare dsh-update-checker name stops resolving and the launch dies with ERR_MODULE_NOT_FOUND: Cannot find package 'dsh-update-checker' imported from …\profiles\web\ before the web server binds. (That importer path is rewritten by dsh to point at the profile directory; the real failing base is $DSH_HOME/package.json. Do not trust the path in the message.) Two things fix it, and both are needed:

# 2a) link the profile's node_modules at the real package (junction, never a copy)
New-Item -ItemType Junction `
  -Path   "$env:USERPROFILE\.dsh\profiles\web\node_modules\dsh-update-checker" `
  -Target "$env:USERPROFILE\.dsh\profiles\node_modules\dsh-update-checker"

# 2b) declare the dependency in the profile manifest
#     $DSH_HOME/profiles/web/package.json → "dependencies": { "dsh-update-checker": "^1.6.1" }

A junction is required rather than a copy: the link's real path must stay …/profiles/node_modules/…, or pickDshHome can no longer recognise the Harness home and the plugin's self-location drifts (which would send its @deepseek-ai/* sync to the wrong place). The declaration is what dsh's readProfilePlugins and this plugin's own findDeclaringProfiles/persistPluginUpdate read to decide which profile owns the plugin — without it the plugin reports itself as permanently outdated.

Step 2 is not optional on a fresh install. A profile that cannot resolve the plugin dies in composeProfile — before the plugin is loaded — so no code inside the plugin can repair that first launch. Do 2a and 2b by hand when you install (or when you add a second profile), and the profile comes up.

After that first successful launch the plugin maintains the mount itself. From v1.6.0 it re-runs ensurePluginMount at startup, after each plugin update and after each plugin rollback: it creates or repairs the link in every profile and writes the declaration into every harness profile, is idempotent, never overwrites a link:/file: spec you set deliberately, and never deletes a directory it cannot prove is its own copy. So a later dsh upgrade, a new profile (same machine), a dropped link or a changed version are all repaired without hand-editing again. Read the state any time at GET /dsh-update-checker/mount.json (read-only); it is also carried in status.json as mount. POST /dsh-update-checker/mount forces a re-check (needs { "confirm": true } + loopback, like every other write route).

Then let patch HMR apply it (or restart dsh web) and reload the page.

Step-by-step guide with troubleshooting (中文): docs/INSTALL.md.

Configuration & portability

All paths are auto-detected at runtime — nothing is hardcoded:

• Plugin / profile dir — derived from the plugin's own install location (import.meta.url).
• $DSH_HOME — the parent of the profiles root (state, backups, restart log live there).
• Composition file — the profile that is actually running wins: $DSH_PROFILE_DIR/cordis.patch.yml → profiles/$DSH_PROFILE/… → the profile whose patch names this plugin → $DSH_HOME/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml. (v1.6.3; before that the web default was used whenever nothing proved otherwise, so a host serving another profile read the wrong node_modules — issue #31.)
• Deployment root — junction realpath first, then DSH_DEPLOY_ROOT, then process.cwd(), then the npm global prefix (parent of npm root -g's output; v1.4.9+ covers npm -g installs).
  • systemd / npm -g escape hatch: if auto-detection ever misses your setup, set DSH_DEPLOY_ROOT to the directory that contains node_modules/@deepseek-ai/dsh (e.g. <npm prefix>/lib on Linux).
• Node / npm executables — resolveNodeExe() finds the real Node: DSH_UC_NODE_EXE override → npm_node_execpath → process.execPath when it is Node → common install dirs → PATH. This is what makes DSH Desktop (Electron, where process.execPath is electron.exe) able to run npm for plugin updates. If your Desktop build bundles Node elsewhere, set DSH_UC_NODE_EXE to it. If your Node is managed by mise / asdf / nvm and your PATH only exposes the version-manager shim (e.g. ~/.local/share/mise/shims/node), the shim directory has no npm beside it; v1.4.22+ resolves the real binary by running node -p process.execPath through the shim. If that still fails (or you want to skip the lookup), set DSH_UC_NODE_EXE to the real binary, e.g. mise which node / asdf which node. v1.6.3 searches npm more widely: beside Node, in node_modules_<major> (Fedora/RHEL nodejs24-npm), /usr/lib, /usr/local/lib, /opt/homebrew/lib, /usr/local/opt/npm/lib, $npm_config_prefix, and through every npm / npm.cmd on PATH — including the real target behind a shim. A packaged desktop app that ships no npm at all still needs one installed (issue #32).
• Restart launcher — self-adapting: DSH_UC_LAUNCHER / DSH_RESTART_LAUNCHER, then common launcher names under the deployment root (DeepSeek Harness.cmd, start-dsh.cmd, …); the chosen launcher is spawned with a visible window, so the restarted server has a console (v1.6.3 — a hidden spawn left an orphan holding the port and swallowed the access URL). The web port is read from the running webServer.port.
• Tuning env vars — DSH_UC_UPDATE_PORT sets the port the update worker stops/starts/probes (default 3080), and DSH_UC_RESTART_WINDOW_MS sets how long the worker keeps observing a slow first start before giving up (default 150000; the progress record streams the whole time).

Platform & install-layout support

• Detection (checks) — layout-agnostic, works on any machine.
• One-click update & restart — no longer Windows-only:
  • Service stop/start probes use Get-NetTCPConnection + taskkill on Windows and ss -H -tlnp "sport = :<port>" (fallback lsof -tiTCP:<port> -sTCP:LISTEN) + SIGKILL on Linux/macOS. The port is always named explicitly, so an unrelated listener can never be matched; on POSIX a PID is only killed when /proc/<pid>/cmdline is unreadable or names node/dsh.
  • The POSIX restart watchdog is scripts/restart-watchdog.sh, the counterpart of scripts/restart-watchdog.ps1. It takes the same environment variables — DSH_RESTART_PORT, DSH_RESTART_PID, DSH_RESTART_NODE_FILE, DSH_RESTART_NODE_ARGS (JSON array), DSH_RESTART_LAUNCHER, DSH_RESTART_WORKDIR, DSH_RESTART_LOG, DSH_RESTART_RESULT — and writes the same result JSON (startedAt, port, pid, recovered, recoveredAt, attempts, error). It relaunches via the node argv first, then systemctl --user restart dsh-web.service, then the launcher path passed as a single argument (a path containing spaces survives); if none of those exist it reports no launcher available instead of pretending to recover. It is invoked as sh <script>, so no executable bit is required.
  • Main-program update adapts: in-place npm install when the deploy root has a package.json, npm install -g otherwise; both run the dry-run guard and re-read the installed version afterwards.
  • Plugin updates — temp-dir install + copy, npm 11/12+ compatible.
• When POSIX cannot be done safely, /update still answers 501 E_PLATFORM_UNSUPPORTED: the service process can only be identified reliably when ss or lsof is present. Install one of them (iproute2, lsof), or stop DSH and update manually.

Notes

• Host code changes require a service restart (the loader caches imported modules); client changes are picked up by HMR and apply on the next page refresh.
• Update/rollback/restart/suppress/settings routes are guarded by { "confirm": true } and a loopback-source check (127.0.0.1/::1).
• Before npm install, a backup (deployment package.json + package-lock.json + both @deepseek-ai version manifests + backup-meta.json + a main-snapshot copy of the @deepseek-ai framework tree) is written to $DSH_HOME/dsh-update-checker-backups/<timestamp>/; both main-program and plugin rollback routes are provided, and main-program rollback restores from the main-snapshot when present instead of re-installing from the registry.

Changelog

• v1.6.4 — the tarball fallback installs what a release adds, and the integrity check proves it (issue #33):

  • A weak network no longer silently drops the new dependencies (#33). When the npm dry-run gate times out, a core update falls back to installVia=tarball, whose work list came from collectUpdateTodo() — a readdir() of the local @deepseek-ai tree. A package the new release adds has no local directory, so it could never be listed, and third-party scopes were never enumerated at all: the 0.1.7-rc.1 → 0.1.7-rc.2 update applied 267 of the 585 packages in the lockfile, left dsh-client-shortcuts, dsh-client-ui-shortcuts, dsh-experimental-auto-review, dsh-llm-deepseek-account, dsh-llm-deepseek-api-key, dsh-util-code-language, @js-temporal/polyfill and jsbi uninstalled, and still reported main-update-ok — port 3080 answered while the plugin/frontend imports failed. The worker now walks the target version's dependency closure from the registry (resolveTargetClosure(), reusing the existing satisfies() / compareVersions() helpers) and plans only what the deployment cannot already resolve: missing packages, plus @deepseek-ai/* packages whose resolved version differs. Anything already satisfying its range is left exactly as it is, so npm's nested duplicates (debug@2 under a ^4 dependent, …) are never flattened; platform-incompatible optional dependencies (73 on the reporting machine) and third-party packages that would need an install script are skipped and reported. Extracted packages land in node_modules/<name> (a new @scope/ directory is created when needed), and the plan, skips and failures are written to the ops log (main-tarball-plan-ok / -incomplete, main-tarball-metadata-failed, main-tarball-plan-conflict).
  • Completeness is now part of the integrity check (#33). verifyTree() only walked the directories that existed, so an uninstalled package could not fail it — that is why the partial install above rolled forward as a success. It now checks the resolved closure as well: a missing or wrong-version package is an integrity problem and the update rolls back, turning a silent half-broken deployment into an honest failure. When the registry cannot be reached the closure is reported incomplete and the previous local-only behavior is kept, so the fallback is never worse than before.
  • Downloads keep their timeouts. httpGetBuffer() aborts on a 20 s idle gap or the per-attempt cap, retries three times with escalating 60/90/180 s caps, and never reuses a socket — the long keep-alive connection to the registry was observed degrading until a single package needed 10–20 minutes.
  • Tests: 244 passing (node --test "scripts/*.test.mjs"), including scripts/integration-tarball-closure.test.mjs (a mock registry covering added, transitive and @scope packages, strict-context upgrades, platform and build-script skips, registry-unreachable fallback, and an integrity case that must fail when a package is removed) and scripts/unit-tarball-timeout.test.mjs (idle/attempt timeouts, size cap, HTTP status, no keep-alive reuse, bounded download pool). Verified against the real registry on a tree with exactly those 8 packages removed: the plan selected exactly those 8, all 12 downloads extracted with the expected versions, and verifyTree() reported 0 problems.

• v1.6.3 — a post-update restart you can see, package-count progress, and npm discovered off the beaten path (issues #30 #31 #32):

  • No more console-less orphan after a core update. startService() relaunched the server with detached: true + stdio: "ignore" + windowsHide: true — an invisible instance with no console. It outlives the update worker, keeps holding the web port, and the access URL/token printed at startup is discarded with its output; the next launch then dies with listen EADDRINUSE 127.0.0.1:3080 and a wall of "N required plugins did not activate" (webserver is required, so the whole plugin graph fails to compose). The restart now prefers the deployment's own launcher (DSH_UC_LAUNCHER / DSH_RESTART_LAUNCHER / DeepSeek Harness.cmd / start-dsh.cmd / …) and spawns it with a visible window; with no launcher it falls back to node … bin.js web, also visible, and the choice is recorded as main-update-service-restart in the ops log.
  • Progress is now "packages downloaded / total packages". The bar no longer rides the dependency-tree creep or counts npm HTTP lines (which include metadata, so it ran ahead of reality). While packages are downloaded/installed the percent is round(done / total * 100) — 100 of 200 packages is 50%, 198 of 200 is 99% — with 已下载 137/273 个包（50%） as the detail. The total comes from the npm dry-run ("added N packages") or the lockfile, and the tarball fallback counts downloaded tarballs the same way. The bar never rewinds, and 100% stays reserved for the finished state.
  • npm is found on distro layouts and shimmed installs (#30 #32). npmCliCandidates() also looks in node_modules_<major> (Fedora/RHEL nodejs24-npm), /usr/lib, /usr/local/lib, /opt/homebrew/lib, /usr/local/opt/npm/lib and $npm_config_prefix; locateNpmCli() resolves every npm/npm.cmd on PATH (and the real target behind a shim) before failing, and its ENPMCLI message now names the layouts it searched and the DSH_UC_NODE_EXE escape hatch. A packaged desktop app that ships no npm at all still cannot run plugin updates — that case needs Node/npm installed or an in-app tarball installer (tracked in #32).
  • The plugin list is read from the profile that is actually running (#31). findCompositionFile() defaulted to profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml whenever it could not prove otherwise, so on a host serving another profile (the desktop app's desktop) the panel read the other profile's node_modules — reporting dshmarket 1.60.0 → 1.65.0 forever while the running profile already had 1.65.0. The composition and its node_modules now resolve from DSH_PROFILE_DIR / DSH_PROFILE first, still validated against this installation's profiles root.
  • Tests: 230 passing (node --test "scripts/*.test.mjs"), with new coverage for the package-count mapping, npm fetch parsing, launcher choice and visibility, running-profile resolution and the Fedora node_modules_<major> layout; the progress E2E timeline asserts the new contract.

• v1.6.2 — one-click core updates on Linux/macOS, and plugin updates that survive a pnpm reify (issues #27 #28 #29, PR #26):

  • POSIX core updates (#29, supersedes PR #19): the update worker, the service stop/start probes and the restart route no longer assume Windows PowerShell. The worker is spawned directly (node <script>, detached) with an error handler that releases the update lock and writes a real error progress record — a failed spawn used to be silent and left the banner stuck at 8%. Port discovery on POSIX uses ss -H -tlnp "sport = :<port>", falls back to lsof -tiTCP:<port> -sTCP:LISTEN, and never scans every listener; a PID is killed only when /proc/<pid>/cmdline is unreadable or names node/dsh, and SIGKILL replaces taskkill. scripts/restart-watchdog.sh mirrors restart-watchdog.ps1 (same environment variables, same result JSON) and relaunches through the node argv first, then systemctl --user restart dsh-web.service, then the launcher path as one argument. Windows is untouched (Get-NetTCPConnection, taskkill /T /F, the PowerShell Start-Process wrapper). The 501 E_PLATFORM_UNSUPPORTED fail-fast is kept for hosts that have neither ss nor lsof.
  • Peer-only plugins install again (#28): buildStageInstallArgs/buildPluginInstallArgs now pass --legacy-peer-deps. The staging prefix is a throwaway tree and the plugin's peers are supplied by the DSH host at runtime, so npm must not resolve them against the registry — there a * peer lands on a package that does not exist (@deepseek-ai/dsh-compact, E404) and every peer-only plugin died with ERESOLVE.
  • PROFILES_ROOT understands per-profile node_modules (#27, PR #26): dirname(profileNodeModules) names the profiles directory only in the shared layout. For …/profiles/<name>/node_modules it resolved to the profile itself, so findDeclaringProfiles() found no manifest, the version was never written back to package.json, and the lockfile was never advanced (persistedManifest:0, and persistedLock:true was [].every(...)). The next pnpm add/pnpm install then reified the tree from that stale lockfile and rolled every previously updated plugin back to the frozen version. pickProfilesRoot() handles both layouts, and pickDshHome() follows it so a custom DSH_HOME is derived instead of falling back to ~/.dsh.

Development

• lib/index.js — Host half: plain ESM, Node built-ins only, no build step; pure helpers exported as named ESM exports for unit testing.
• lib/client.js — Client half: plain JS (window.__ModuleLoader__), requires only react, no build step.
• Tests: npm test (Node ≥ 20 built-in test runner, no third-party deps).
• scripts/restart-service.ps1 — manual restart helper (run with -ExecutionPolicy Bypass).

License

MIT