openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Bug]: npm install -g [email protected]+ silently exits 1 in dep tree resolution (macOS, npm 11.12.1, node v25.9.0) [1 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

Upgrading from 2026.4.26 to 2026.4.27 or 2026.4.29 via npm install -g openclaw@latest silently fails on macOS — npm exits with code 1 and writes only one error line ("A complete log of this run can be found in: ...") with no stack trace, no error message, no peer/resolve complaint. The debug log shows npm stuck looping over the same handful of @smithy/* and @aws-sdk/* manifests in dep tree resolution, never reaching the install/extract phase.

2026.4.26 installs fine on the same machine. Looks like a regression introduced when AWS SDK / smithy deps were added in 2026.4.27.

Repro

# Starting from a working 2026.4.26 install
$ openclaw --version
OpenClaw 2026.4.26 (be8c246)

$ npm install -g [email protected]
npm error A complete log of this run can be found in: /Users/.../2026-05-02T04_38_43_631Z-debug-0.log
$ echo $?
1

$ openclaw --version
OpenClaw 2026.4.26 (be8c246)   # unchanged

Same result for @2026.4.27, @latest, and even installing the prefetched tarball directly:

$ npm pack [email protected]   # works, downloads 22MB tgz, 9309 files
$ npm install -g /tmp/openclaw-2026.4.29.tgz   # fails identically

Tried (all fail with the same silent exit 1):

• --legacy-peer-deps
• --force
• --ignore-scripts
• --omit=optional
• --verbose
• direct tarball install
• npm cache clean --force then retry
• both global (-g) and local (npm install in a fresh /tmp/oc-test dir)

Debug log signal

The npm log ends at line ~1066 (a normal complete install reaches 6000+) with verbose exit 1 and no error/stack. The last hundreds of lines are dominated by repeatedly fetching the same handful of @smithy/* manifests:

1027 silly fetch manifest @smithy/uuid@^1.1.2
1028 silly packumentCache full:.../uuid cache-miss
...
1052 silly fetch manifest @smithy/uuid@^1.1.2          # same manifest, again
1053 silly packumentCache full:.../uuid cache-miss
...

@smithy/uuid, @smithy/util-buffer-from, @smithy/querystring-builder, @smithy/eventstream-serde-universal etc. all appear repeatedly. No tar extraction, no symlink creation, no postinstall — npm gives up before that phase.

This shape is consistent with Arborist (npm 11's dep resolver) hitting a stack overflow / pathological recursion on the AWS SDK Bedrock client's transitive dep tree, then aborting silently.

Environment

OS:   macOS Darwin 25.4.0 (arm64, Apple Silicon)
node: v25.9.0
npm:  11.12.1

Install path: /opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/openclaw/ (Homebrew-managed prefix, user-owned, no permission issues).

Workaround / current state

• Staying on 2026.4.26 (works fine, gateway / channels / cron all healthy).
• Backup of current state taken before each upgrade attempt — config not touched.

Possibly related

• #74251 — npm install -g openclaw@latest crashes with V8 Fatal error in WSL2 Ubuntu 24.04 (similar shape, different platform; both look like resolver-side failures introduced after AWS SDK was added)
• #75632 (closed) — TUI stalls on 4.27-4.29, "rollback to 4.23 massively improves startup" — same regression window
• #75717 — openclaw tui hangs on 4.29, missing dist file
• #63719 — openclaw update can leave the global openclaw bin missing after npm global update

Suggests the 4.27 dep-tree change has multiple downstream failure modes; on macOS + npm 11.12.1 it manifests as silent install failure rather than runtime hang.