Plugin update is impossible: installBundle refuses with already-installed without comparing versions

[envyzero]

issue-already-installed-blocks-update.md

[PerryLink]

This one is documented as intended, and the exact "no version comparison" behaviour you describe is the point of the change rather than a gap in it.

docs/upgrade-guide/v0.2.1-alpha.2/plugin-install-over-installed/guide.md:12:

In a profile that runs HMR, which the shipped profiles do, pluginManager.installBundle(spec) used to run pnpm over a package the profile already depends on and report restart-required while the previous version kept running. It now fails before pnpm runs, with application: 'failed' and error.code: 'already-installed', and changes no profile file, when the spec names an installed package: a registry name with or without a version, a local directory, or the git or tarball spec the dependency was saved with.

So the refusal is version-blind on purpose: the previous behaviour installed the new files and then told you a restart was required, while the old code kept serving until that restart. The guide's line 14 also covers the case you are presumably in — "an installed package that cannot be removed, such as a bundle carrying plugin management, can no longer be installed over while HMR runs".

Updating is still possible, just in two steps: removeBundle(name) then installBundle(spec) (guide line 18). The agent tool already says this in its own error path — packages/boot/plugin-manager/src/tools.ts:18:

'already-installed': 'The package is already installed; to install another version, call remove_bundle first, then install_bundle again.'

and the Web page's Update for an Official plugin does the remove-then-install itself (guide line 14). If you hit the refusal from the UI's Update button rather than from a direct installBundle call, that is worth reporting separately, because the guide says the button is supposed to take the removal path and the error you got would mean it did not.

One fair complaint in your framing: "without comparing versions" makes the error message the wrong shape for a user who typed a newer version. The code is right, but the text says "already installed" when it means "installed, and installation over it is refused while HMR runs". If you are writing this up as a UX issue rather than a bug, that is the sentence to quote.