fix(packages): survive a failed install instead of aborting startupHEADmain

A fresh install pulls around 190 packages over the network. One transient download error left the config two thirds loaded, with hooks registered for packages that never installed.

use-package already warns and continues when an install fails, but it guards with condition-case-unless-debug, which does nothing while debug-on-error is set. early-init sets that for all of startup so my own errors stay loud, and it's what disarms the guard. I inhibited the debugger for the install alone, so the rest of init keeps it. Failures are recorded and reported when startup finishes, and cj/retry-failed-package-installs picks them up.

Editing hooks are silenced during an install. Generating autoloads visits .el files, which is how one missing package breaks the install of unrelated ones. A session-wide retry budget bounds the retrying. Installs stop after five failures in a row, since a run that long means the network is gone rather than one package being unlucky.

:vc packages get the same treatment through advice. use-package drops :ensure whenever :vc is present, and its clone path carries no error handling. A machine without credentials for the git host aborted init the same way.

make bootstrap installs everything headlessly, so a fresh machine never meets the debugger. It refuses to run against byte-compiled modules, where use-package consumes :ensure at compile time and a pass would report success having installed nothing.

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index dade0be9..b8580912 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
 #   make compile           - Byte-compile all modules
 #   make compile-file FILE=  - Byte-compile one file with the project load path
 #   make lint              - Run all linters (checkdoc, package-lint, elisp-lint)
+#   make bootstrap         - Install every package headlessly (fresh machine)
 #   make profile           - Profile Emacs startup performance
 #   make clean             - Remove test artifacts and compiled files
 #   make clean-compiled    - Remove .elc/.eln files only
@@ -54,7 +55,7 @@ EMACS_TEST = $(EMACS_BATCH) -L $(TEST_DIR) -L $(MODULE_DIR)
 .PHONY: help targets test test-all test-unit test-integration test-file test-name \
         test-bash theme-studio-test theme-studio-check theme-studio-coverage theme-studio-gen theme-studio-open theme-studio-theme theme-studio-theme-load theme-studio-theme-reload deploy-wip \
         benchmark coverage coverage-summary coverage-clean \
-        validate-parens validate-modules compile compile-file lint profile \
+        validate-parens validate-modules compile compile-file lint bootstrap profile \
         task-sorted \
         clean clean-compiled clean-tests reset
 
@@ -100,6 +101,7 @@ help:
 	@echo "    make lint              - Run all linters (checkdoc, package-lint, elisp-lint)"
 	@echo ""
 	@echo "  Utilities:"
+	@echo "    make bootstrap         - Install every package headlessly (fresh machine)"
 	@echo "    make profile           - Profile Emacs startup performance"
 	@echo "    make clean             - Remove test artifacts and compiled files"
 	@echo "    make clean-compiled    - Remove .elc/.eln files only"
@@ -452,6 +454,9 @@ lint:
 # Utility Targets
 # ============================================================================
 
+bootstrap:
+	@bash scripts/bootstrap-packages.sh
+
 profile:
 	@echo "Profiling Emacs startup..."
 	@if [ -f "$(EMACS_HOME)/early-init.el" ]; then \