fix(apphost): register OpenRegister's autoloader before referencing AppHost (gate-64 / ADR-040)

[rubenvdlinde]

The defect

Nextcloud registers apps in sorted order: OC_App::getEnabledApps() does sort($apps) and Coordinator::registerApps() walks that list calling OC_App::registerAutoloading($appId, $path) and then $app->register() one app at a time. Every app's register() therefore runs before the PSR-4 prefix of every alphabetically-later app exists.

procest sorts after openregister, so this happens to hold today — by alphabet, not by design. The problem is what the class_exists() guard in AppHostRegistrar actually measures: it cannot tell "OpenRegister is absent" from "OpenRegister has not registered its prefix yet". Both answer false, and both take the same branch — a silent return that skips the entire AppHost engine: health, metrics, preferences, deep links, the SPA page/catch-all, all seven dashboard widgets and the MCP provider. On a healthy instance, with nothing in the UI to say so.

hydra gate-64 apphost-autoload-prelude (v1.5.0) flags this as LATENT: it works by alphabet alone, and renaming the app or moving this code somewhere that sorts earlier breaks it silently.

The fix

lib/AppInfo/OpenRegisterAutoloader.php — register OpenRegister's PSR-4 prefix ourselves before the guard runs, so the guard's false means only what it is supposed to mean:

• OC_App::registerAutoloading() touches only the autoloader and is idempotent, so on the current ordering this call costs nothing.
• IAppManager::loadApp('openregister') is deliberately not used: it marks OpenRegister loaded and calls Coordinator::bootApp(), booting it before its own register() has run.
• The prelude never throws. It runs inside Application::register(), which Nextcloud executes on every request, so an exception escaping it would abort the whole composition root.

It lives in its own class so that "never throws" contract is reachable from a unit test without a Nextcloud DI container.

Verification

• hydra gate-64 goes FAIL → PASS on this branch under the v1.5.0 gate script. Positive control: deleting OpenRegisterAutoloader.php from the same tree puts it back to FAIL.
• New tests/Unit/AppInfo/OpenRegisterAutoloaderTest.php asserts the never-throws and idempotence contracts.
• phpcs clean on all touched files.

Spec: new requirement in openspec/specs/apphost-adoption/spec.md.

Ref: ADR-040, hydra-gates gate-64 (ConductionNL/.github#174).

[github-actions]

Quality Report — ConductionNL/procest @ bed1748

Check	PHP	Vue	Security	License	Tests
lint	✅
phpcs	✅
phpmd	✅
psalm	❌
phpstan	✅
phpmetrics	✅
eslint		✅
stylelint		✅
build		✅
check-manifest		✅
check-vue3-compile		✅
test-l10n		✅
composer			✅	✅ 100/100
npm			✅	✅ 550/550
PHPUnit					✅
Newman					⏭️
Playwright					❌
Hydra gates					❌

---

Quality workflow — 2026-08-06 08:11 UTC

Download the full PDF report from the workflow artifacts.

[github-actions]

Quality Report — ConductionNL/procest @ 34bfe32

Check	PHP	Vue	Security	License	Tests
lint	✅
phpcs	✅
phpmd	✅
psalm	✅
phpstan	✅
phpmetrics	✅
eslint		✅
stylelint		✅
build		✅
check-manifest		✅
check-vue3-compile		✅
test-l10n		✅
composer			✅	✅ 100/100
npm			✅	✅ 550/550
PHPUnit					❌
Newman					⏭️
Playwright					❌
Hydra gates					❌

---

Quality workflow — 2026-08-06 08:18 UTC

Download the full PDF report from the workflow artifacts.

[github-actions]

Quality Report — ConductionNL/procest @ d5049ef

Check	PHP	Vue	Security	License	Tests
lint	✅
phpcs	✅
phpmd	✅
psalm	✅
phpstan	✅
phpmetrics	✅
eslint		✅
stylelint		✅
build		✅
check-manifest		✅
check-vue3-compile		✅
test-l10n		✅
composer			✅	✅ 100/100
npm			✅	✅ 550/550
PHPUnit					✅
Newman					⏭️
Playwright					❌
Hydra gates					❌

---

Quality workflow — 2026-08-06 08:37 UTC

Download the full PDF report from the workflow artifacts.

[github-actions]

Quality Report — ConductionNL/procest @ 80f6ba4

Check	PHP	Vue	Security	License	Tests
lint	✅
phpcs	✅
phpmd	✅
psalm	✅
phpstan	✅
phpmetrics	✅
eslint		✅
stylelint		✅
build		✅
check-manifest		✅
check-vue3-compile		✅
test-l10n		✅
composer			✅	✅ 100/100
npm			✅	✅ 550/550
PHPUnit					✅
Newman					⏭️
Playwright					✅
Hydra gates					✅

---

Quality workflow — 2026-08-06 08:58 UTC

Download the full PDF report from the workflow artifacts.