A freshly installed plugin is ready the moment the install finishes

Installing a package could leave it in a state where the very next thing to touch it came away empty-handed. Two ways you might have seen it: a package that ships files — course videos, posters, images — installed without them, after a pause of about a minute and a note that its binaries were not being served. Or a freshly installed plugin's own page came up blank, showing none of the views the package brought with it.

What was happening

Installing a package changes what kind of thing its root is, and the portal restarts that root so it picks up its new behaviour. The install did not wait for that restart. It started it, then handed back.

So everything that came next — publishing the package's files, the first person to open one of its pages — could arrive while the root was still on its way down. Nothing was written, nothing rendered, and because the reply died with the restarting root, whatever was waiting waited out a full minute before giving up. Which side of that dead heat a machine landed on is why the same package could install perfectly on one portal and arrive half-empty on another.

The restart was also happening too early to be useful. It ran before the package's own code had finished building, so the root that came back could not yet see what the package had brought — and, having come back once, it kept that empty view.

What changed

The restart now happens once the package's code is ready, and the install waits for the root to come back before it finishes. It asks the root a question that can only be answered after the restart, so there is no window left to race.

An install therefore hands back a package that is actually ready: its files are published, its pages render its own views, and the minute-long pause is gone.