teknium1 hit ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'hermes_bootstrap' after
a code update, on both his Windows machine AND his Linux workstation. The
failure mode is real and affects every user who updates hermes by any path
OTHER than a fully-successful ``hermes update``.
## What happens
hermes_bootstrap.py is a top-level module registered via pyproject.toml's
``py-modules`` list (added by Brooklyn's Windows UTF-8 stdio work). It
must be registered in the venv's editable-install .pth file before Python
can find it as a bare ``import hermes_bootstrap``.
``hermes update`` handles this correctly: (1) git reset --hard, (2) clear
__pycache__, (3) uv pip install -e . (re-registers the package including
the new py-modules list), (4) restart.
BUT if any step AFTER (1) fails — network blip during pip install, PEP 668
on a system Python, venv locked, uv not in PATH, a crash mid-update — the
user is left with new code that references hermes_bootstrap and a venv
that doesn't know about it. Every hermes invocation after that crashes
with ModuleNotFoundError, including ``hermes update`` itself. No recovery
path without manual `uv pip install -e .`.
Also affects users who ``git pull`` the repo directly without running
hermes update — relatively common for developers.
## Fix
Wrap ``import hermes_bootstrap`` in a try/except ModuleNotFoundError
across all 6 entry points (hermes_cli/main, run_agent, gateway/run,
acp_adapter/entry, cli, batch_runner). On Windows, missing bootstrap
means the UTF-8 stdio setup doesn't run — degraded behavior (Unicode
chars may fail to print) but NOT a crash. POSIX is unaffected either way
since the bootstrap is a no-op there.
Once hermes is running again, the user can ``hermes update`` to fully
recover.
## Test update
tests/test_hermes_bootstrap.py::test_entry_point_imports_bootstrap
scans for the first top-level import in each entry point and asserts it
is hermes_bootstrap. Extended the check to accept a Try block whose body
is a lone Import of hermes_bootstrap — that's the recovery-friendly form
we just introduced.
Verified behavior by ``mv hermes_bootstrap.py hermes_bootstrap.py.bak``
and confirming ``python -c "import hermes_cli.main"`` succeeds. 82/82
tests pass (hermes_bootstrap + windows-native + windows-compat).
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