Modeler 0.8.8 silently fails first-run download on macOS arm64 with pre-release channel enabled

Syside Bug Reports
1

Hello,

After updating to Modeler 0.8.8 on macOS arm64, opening any .sysml file shows a “Downloading Syside Tools” progress notification that never resolves. No error surfaces to the user, no features are available, and there is no visible indication of what went wrong.

The underlying failure (visible only in the extension log) is a repeated 404 when pre-release is enabled:

[info] Downloading Syside tools (proxy mode: Auto)
[info] Status from https://raw.pkg.keygen.sh/.../@syside-modeler-dependencies-pre-release/0.8.8/dependencies-ts-darwin-arm64.zip: 404 Not Found
[info] JSON response: {"errors":[{"title":"Not found","detail":"The requested release artifact 'dependencies-ts-darwin-arm64.zip' was not found","code":"NOT_FOUND"}]}
[info] Install Syside Tools response: "failure"

Fix (in settings.json):

"syside.modeler.usePreReleaseToolsChannel": false

Reload window → extension downloads cleanly from the stable channel.

My guess: the pre-release dependency bundle, atl east for macOS arm64 v0.8.8 doesn’t appear to be published in Keygen’s release index, so the extension 404s on every attempt when the pre-release channel is enabled. The stable channel has the artifact.

I think this is worth flagging because the failure is invisible from the UI — users on pre-release + macOS arm64 would likely just conclude the extension is broken, without any signal pointing at the channel setting.

2

Hello,

Thank you for your report.

usePreReleaseToolsChannel setting is false by default. Is there a specific reason why you tried the pre-release tools? For the last few versions we have not published any pre-releases.

Regarding the error: the error pop-up is shown, but disappears after some time, so it is possible to miss it. We will fix this behavior.

Best wishes,
Vytautas

3

Hi @Vytautas ,

Thank you for the response. I dug into it some more and I think I might have caused the toggle in the VSCode extension settings UI:

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If I recall correctly, I was trying to debug a Tom Sawyer Visualization issue with sequence diagrams not rendering bidirectional message arrows. I think I might have assumed that swapping to the (labs) version of the tools would be an easy way to see if the bug was patched. I wasn’t aware that the pre-release channel wasn’t being shipped for the past few versions. I guess the problem did not surface until the automatic update to v0.8.8. This might have been just a user-induced failure mode on my end. Would it be possible in the future to set a fallback to the regular channel if the pre-release 404’s? Either way, I think this is not really a bug with Syside.

4

I think we will just remove the setting since it is not used and apparently problematic.