openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Feishu channel crashes during plugin-runtime-deps hot-rebuild: Cannot find package openclaw [1 participants]

Bug Description

When a plugin (e.g., Microsoft plugin with node-edge-tts) installs new dependencies, the plugin-runtime-deps directory gets hot-rebuilt. During this rebuild, the Feishu channel crashes repeatedly with the following error and fails to auto-recover across multiple restart attempts. Only a full Gateway restart fixes the issue.

Error Message

[main] channel exited: Cannot find package 'openclaw' imported from /home/openclaw/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.22-4eca5026e977/dist/extensions/feishu/monitor-BPkLDEKG.js

Reproduction Steps

1. OpenClaw Gateway is running normally with Feishu channel connected
2. A plugin (Microsoft) installs new runtime dependencies (node-edge-tts@^1.2.10)
3. This triggers a plugin-runtime-deps directory rebuild
4. During rebuild, Feishu channel crashes with the above error
5. Feishu auto-restart attempts 5+ times, all fail
6. Only a full systemctl --user restart openclaw-gateway recovers the channel

Timeline from Logs

Technical Analysis

The monitor-*.js file in the Feishu extension imports modules like:

import { ... } from "openclaw/plugin-sdk/text-runtime";
import { ... } from "openclaw/plugin-sdk/conversation-runtime";

These resolve via a symlink in plugin-runtime-deps/node_modules/openclaw → /usr/lib/node_modules/openclaw.

During the hot-rebuild:

• The plugin-runtime-deps directory is being rewritten/replaced
• The node_modules symlink may become temporarily invalid or point to an incompatible state
• The Feishu channel's ESM import resolution fails during restart attempts

After restart:

• All openclaw/plugin-sdk/* modules exist and are accessible at the target path
• The symlink node_modules/openclaw → /usr/lib/node_modules/openclaw is valid
• Running import('openclaw/plugin-sdk/text-runtime') from the feishu extension directory succeeds

Suggested Fix

1. Atomic swap: Rebuild plugin-runtime-deps into a temporary directory, then atomically swap (rename) to avoid partial states
2. Graceful channel shutdown: Before starting a rebuild, signal dependent channels to pause, then restart them after the rebuild completes
3. Rebuild isolation: Ensure the node_modules symlink remains valid throughout the rebuild process

Environment

• OpenClaw: 2026.4.22 (00bd2cf)
• Node.js: v22.22.2
• OS: Linux 6.17.0-22-generic (x64)
• Channel: Feishu (WebSocket mode)
• plugin-runtime-deps directory: openclaw-2026.4.22-4eca5026e977

Impact

• All messages to the Feishu channel are lost/delayed during the crash window (~4 minutes in this case)
• Users see no response from the bot
• Auto-restart mechanism is ineffective because the module resolution error persists across restarts

This is a reliability issue that affects any plugin that triggers plugin-runtime-deps rebuild while channels are active.