fix(packaging): three MSIX first-run regressions found by a real sideload

2026-09-12T13:48:22Z

A second-machine sideload of the MSIX target surfaced three things the earlier verification round (which only proved the package installs and runs) had missed: 1. meshbay-node missing from PATH. installer.nsh's customInstall adds node-runtime\ to HKCU\Environment at install time -- an unelevated per-user write, never blocked by MSIX's no-elevation rule, only by the more basic fact that an AppX/MSIX install runs no custom code at all. packaging/win/ensure-node-path.ps1 (idempotent, no admin verb) plus main.js's winEnsureNodeOnPath() do it from the app itself instead, once per launch, shipped to Full and MSIX (not Light, nothing to add there). Verified live via the Node inspector protocol: the entry was in HKCU\Environment\Path after a launch, absent before. 2. A daemon that crashes on startup failed silently. spawnNodeDetached() used stdio: 'ignore', so a real crash reproduced live (a second instance colliding with the first on 127.0.0.1:18000) left waitForNode()'s generic 60s timeout as the only failure ever shown. spawnNodeDetachedWatched() pipes stdio and watches ~2.5s, rejecting immediately with the daemon's own stderr on an early exit; a survivor has its streams released and runs fully detached exactly as before. First version bounded the captured text by line count and a live test showed that cut the actual OSError line -- two uvicorn/asyncio tracebacks followed it in the real capture -- so it is bounded by characters instead. 3. No hint that a startup-mode choice exists. The install-time radio page was the only place this was ever offered, and nothing replaces it now that no install-time page can exist at all. SetupWelcome (the existing first-run banner) grew a conditional hint, shown only while a bundled node is present and neither autostart nor service mode is configured yet. Considered and rejected: linking straight to the Node page -- its route is gated on a linked hub node key, false on the exact fresh-install screen this hint targets, so the link would have been dead on arrival. New key setup.node_startup_hint, added to all ten locale catalogues. test_packaging_win.py gained six tests pinning all three (69 total). Full plan and verification detail: C:\Users\admin\devel\msix-installer.md section 13 (out of repo). Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5

meshbay.git/packaging/win/ensure-node-path.ps1, branch 0.14

fix(packaging): three MSIX first-run regressions found by a real sideload