The desktop install step ran npm ci / npm run pack with no wall-clock cap, and
the sibling browser-tools / TUI / agent-browser dependency installs had the same
gap. The Electron binary (~150MB) is fetched from GitHub during the pack; on a
throttled or region-blocked link that download can *stall* rather than fail —
npm never errors and never exits, so the installer sits on "Build desktop app"
(step 9/11) indefinitely with only harmless 'npm warn deprecated' lines visible.
The existing self-heal escalation (cache purge -> dist restore -> npmmirror
fallback) only fires when pack returns non-zero, so a stall bypassed it.
- run_with_timeout (generalized from run_browser_install_with_timeout): GNU
timeout --foreground -k 10 (Ctrl+C-aware, #35166) / gtimeout for external
commands, else a pure-shell process-group watchdog so stock macOS (neither
binary present) is protected. Shell functions (_desktop_pack) always take the
pure-shell path — the timeout binary can't exec a function. Integer-normalized
budget + a boundary recheck so a command finishing in the final poll second
isn't mislabeled 124. The internal wait is guarded so set -e can't abort
mid-function before the real exit code is computed.
- Wrap the desktop npm ci/install (sharing ONE budget via a computed deadline so
a stall can't cost 2x DESKTOP_BUILD_TIMEOUT) + all three _desktop_pack attempts
(DESKTOP_BUILD_TIMEOUT, default 900s), and the browser-tools / TUI / agent-
browser registry installs (NODE_DEPS_TIMEOUT, default 600s).
A stall now converts to a bounded non-zero exit that feeds the existing mirror
self-heal instead of hanging the whole install.
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