PR #72332: fix(gateway): suppress Windows console flicker and prevent Bonjour fatal crashes (#70238, #72344, #72339)

• Repository: openclaw/openclaw
• Author: PratikRai0101
• State: open | merged: False
• Link: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/pull/72332

Description (problem / solution / changelog)

fix(gateway): suppress Windows console flicker and prevent Bonjour fatal crashes (#70238, #72344, #72339)

Summary

• Problem: On Windows, launching the gateway causes jarring command prompt flickers. More critically, on both Linux and Windows, the Bonjour plugin causes fatal gateway crashes due to unhandled CIAO PROBING CANCELLED rejections and hard process.exit(1) calls in the @homebridge/ciao dependency when mDNS conflicts (like Avahi) occur.
• Why it matters: This range of issues makes the gateway appear unstable on Windows and entirely unusable on many headless Linux VPS environments where mDNS stacks often conflict.
• What changed: - Windows Flicker Fix: Added windowsHide: true to the TUI spawn and patched 6 exec calls within @homebridge/ciao.
  • Plugin Shielding: Updated advertiser.ts with error helpers to catch and suppress CANCELLED errors, logging them as debug instead of allowing them to crash the process.
  • Dependency Hardening: Patched @homebridge/[email protected] to replace process.exit(1) with console.warn() in CiaoService.js and Responder.js recovery paths.
  • Conflict Resilience: Added detection for EADDRINUSE. If a conflict (e.g., Avahi) is detected, the plugin now logs a warning and disables itself gracefully rather than crashing the core service.
• What did NOT change: No changes were made to core networking logic or discovery protocols.

Change Type

• Bug fix
• Security hardening (Stability)
• Refactor required for the fix (Dependency patch)

Scope

• Gateway / orchestration
• Integrations (Bonjour/mDNS)
• UI / DX

Linked Issues

• Closes #70238
• Closes #72344
• Closes #72339
• This PR fixes a bug or regression

Root Cause

1. Visual Flicker: Missing windowsHide flags on child process spawns in both internal code and dependencies.
2. Fatal Crashes: Probing cancellations from ciao were leaking as unhandled promise rejections during watchdog restarts.
3. Hard Exits: The @homebridge/ciao library utilized process.exit(1) for internal network interface update failures, which is inappropriate for a plugin-level dependency.

User-visible / Behavior Changes

• Windows: Silent startup without flashing cmd.exe windows.
• Linux: Resilience against existing Avahi/mDNS stacks; the gateway logs a conflict warning and continues to run.
• General: Improved reliability; Bonjour failures are no longer fatal to the core gateway process.

Repro + Verification

Environment

• OS: Windows 11 / Ubuntu 24.04 (Headless VPS)
• Runtime: Node v22+
• Tooling: pnpm

Steps

1. Start gateway on Windows -> Verified: No visible console flickers.
2. Start gateway on Linux with avahi-daemon active -> Verified: Logs mDNS conflict detected, gateway remains stable.
3. Trigger watchdog re-advertise cycle -> Verified: CANCELLED errors caught, process stays alive.

Evidence

• All 29 bonjour extension tests pass.
• Verified pnpm patch-commit for @homebridge/[email protected] contains both visibility flags and exit-trap removals.
• Confidence Score: 5/5 (Greptile)

Human Verification

• Verified scenarios: Local Windows 11 build; Headless Linux VPS (Contabo) with Avahi conflict.
• Edge cases checked: Relaunching the gateway multiple times; manual watchdog triggers.

Changed files

• extensions/bonjour/src/advertiser.test.ts (modified, +32/-0)
• extensions/bonjour/src/advertiser.ts (modified, +86/-20)
• package.json (modified, +2/-1)
• patches/@[email protected] (added, +94/-0)
• pnpm-lock.yaml (modified, +5/-2)
• src/plugins/jiti-loader-cache.test.ts (modified, +1/-5)
• src/tui/tui-launch.ts (modified, +1/-0)