Codeman itself always lived under $HOME; administrator rights were only
spent on what it needs first (system packages for Node.js, tmux and git,
Homebrew on a Mac). An account without those rights could not install it:
the installer died in ensure_sudo, or in Homebrew's own installer.
install.sh now has a no-admin route, taken by itself when the account has
no administrator rights (no sudo binary; outside sudo/wheel/admin and
`sudo -n true` fails; a refused sudo password; a Mac account outside the
admin group with no writable Homebrew) and forced with --no-admin or
CODEMAN_NO_ADMIN=1:
- Node.js: the official tarball from nodejs.org, checked against the
SHASUMS256.txt published beside it, into ~/.codeman/runtime/node.
- tmux: the tmux project's own build (tmux/tmux-builds 3.7c), checked
against a SHA-256 pinned in the installer, into ~/.codeman/runtime/bin.
- Both are linked from ~/.local/bin (never over a file that is not ours),
and the runtime is on PATH and on the LaunchAgent's PATH.
- git is never installed. Without a working git the source comes as an
archive, the install is marked with .install-source, and it updates by
re-running the installer: the new tree is built beside the old one and
swapped in only after the build succeeded. A later re-run on a machine
that has gained git turns it back into a clone.
- Nothing on this route runs sudo, Homebrew or `xcode-select --install`,
and the route is never decided by `sudo -v`.
What it cannot supply is checked before the first download: a C/C++
toolchain on Linux (node-pty 1.1.0 compiles there), musl, and macOS below
15 (the tmux build's deployment target).
Along the way:
- check_git no longer trusts `command -v git`. On a Mac without the Xcode
Command Line Tools /usr/bin/git is a stub that opens Apple's install
dialog; it is judged by `xcode-select -p` and never executed. Any other
git is asked for its version.
- scripts/git-hooks.mjs answers "not a checkout" without running git, for
the same reason: postinstall calls it on every npm install.
- The in-app updater knows the install kind `archive` and points such an
install at the installer instead of `npm i -g aicodeman@latest`.
- download() and download_to_stdout() resolve DOWNLOADER themselves. Only
main() used to set it, so `install.sh cloudflared` died on `set -u` with
the message swallowed by the step log.
- The AI CLI menu leaves out a Homebrew-only install command where there
is no Homebrew.
Verified with the real installer: a bare Ubuntu 24.04 container as an
unprivileged user (install, a PTY round trip through the API, update by
re-run, cloudflared, uninstall), the same without a compiler (stops before
any download), with a broken then working git, with sudo present but not
usable, and on macOS 26 (arm64) in an isolated HOME with sudo, brew, git,
the compilers, launchctl and tailscale replaced by tripwires. Not verified
on a real standard macOS account: that account was an administrator.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Codeman running under docker/docker-compose.yaml lost the ability to update
itself from App Settings -> Updates. The image had no .git (excluded by
.dockerignore), so the install reported as "unknown"; there was no init system
for detectSupervisor() to find; the runtime stage had neither devDependencies
nor a build toolchain; and a pull into the baked /opt/codeman would have landed
in the container's writable layer and been discarded by the next `up`.
Restore it through configuration rather than a second updater, so the release
channel, auto-stash, status file and boot reconcile are all reused unchanged:
- The checkout Compose builds from is bind-mounted over /opt/codeman, so the
update's git checkout and rebuild land on the host and survive recreation.
- The restart is the server exiting; `restart: unless-stopped` relaunches the
container on the new dist/. This is the one supervisor whose updater does NOT
outlive the restart, which is safe only because the terminal "restarting"
marker is written first.
- node_modules and dist are named volumes over the bind mount, so
container-compiled native modules never enter the host checkout.
- The runtime image keeps devDependencies and gains python3/make/g++, since
`npm run build` is tsc + esbuild and node-pty has no Linux prebuild.
An in-place container update applies code only, because a restart reuses the
existing image and config. evaluateEnvironmentGate() reads the target release's
own files with `git show <tag>:<path>` and refuses when server.Dockerfile or
docker-compose.yaml changed, when .env.example gained keys the user's .env
lacks, or when the restart policy would not bring the container back. The
missing-key check matters most: Compose resolves an unset ${VAR} to the empty
string and starts anyway, so a new required setting would otherwise arrive as a
silently blank variable. Every unknown fails open, and the gate is re-evaluated
server-side on POST /api/system/update.
The four global agent CLIs are pinned, because an unpinned CLI bump is the one
environment change no diff-derived gate can see; pinning turns it into a
Dockerfile change the gate already detects.
Adds test/docker-compose-env-parity.test.ts as the merge-side guard (every
compose ${VAR} has an .env.example entry and the reverse) and
test/docker-self-update.test.ts for the pure gate decisions.
Documented in docs/docker-self-update.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_013yAQ2y9t81jzSfpStUxx5T
`GET /api/system/update/check` answers "is there a newer published release
tag?", which is the right question for an npm install but not for a git clone
that tracks a branch. Such an install can be many commits behind its own remote
while the latest tag says it is current, and nothing surfaces that.
Adds `GET /api/system/repo-status`: an informational companion that reports what
this CHECKOUT looks like against its own remotes — current branch and commit,
ahead/behind counts per remote, the remote's role (tracking / upstream / other),
and a bounded list of incoming commits.
Read-only and defensive: every git invocation is `execFileSync` with an argv
array and a timeout, a non-git or remote-less install reports a structured
`error` rather than throwing, and nothing here mutates the working tree or
touches the updater's own state.
Tests: 24 cases in test/repo-status.test.ts.
A KeepAlive system-level LaunchDaemon (the right setup for headless Macs,
where no GUI login means LaunchAgents never start) is now detected as
supervisor 'launchd-daemon': the updater kills the server PID (passed via
--server-pid) and launchd respawns it on the new dist/ — no root needed.
Detection requires the daemon plist to be bootstrapped AND KeepAlive=true.
Also: on boot, a 'completed-needs-manual-restart' status auto-completes
when the running version matches the staged target, so the stale
'restart Codeman to apply' instruction no longer lingers in the UI.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Update Codeman from the web UI: a "Check for updates" button queries GitHub
for the latest tagged release (git ls-remote fallback) and shows release
notes; "Update now" runs git checkout <tag> → npm install → npm run build →
restart, streaming live progress that survives the service restart.
- Release-tag channel; dirty trees auto-stashed (left for manual git stash pop)
- Cross-platform restart: systemd / launchd / manual, detected at runtime
- Updater runs detached (systemd-run --scope on Linux, setsid on macOS) so the
restart it triggers can't kill the build mid-flight
- Build-failure rollback to the pre-update commit; boot reconcile with an
update-id/freshness guard; 409 concurrency lock; runner staged outside the
repo; strict tag validation; CODEMAN_DISABLE_SELF_UPDATE kill-switch
- Endpoints: GET /api/system/update/check, POST /api/system/update,
GET /api/system/update/status
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Codeman maintainer