behave

Installing

WWW::Playwright drives a Node process, so it needs three things in place: Node itself, the playwright npm package, and the Chromium browser binary.

Node#

Install Node 18 or newer. The transport finds node on PATH; override the path with PLAYWRIGHT_NODE if needed (see Configuration).

node --version

The Raku distribution#

zef install WWW::Playwright

The npm package and the browser binary#

After the Raku distribution is installed, run bin/www-playwright-setup. It installs the pinned playwright npm package and the Chromium binary next to the sidecar script.

www-playwright-setup    # the setup script shipped with the distribution

bin/www-playwright-setup runs two steps in the sidecar home directory:

  1. npm install to fetch the pinned playwright package.
  2. npx playwright install chromium to download the browser binary.

Where the sidecar home is#

The sidecar home is the directory the sidecar resolves playwright from at runtime, and it depends on how the distribution is laid out:

  • Repo checkout (running with -Ilib): the home is resources/sidecar, where package.json and sidecar.mjs already live side by side. bin/www-playwright-setup installs node_modules there.
  • Installed from zef: resources are stored content-addressed, so the sidecar script and package.json are not siblings. bin/www-playwright-setup materializes them into a per-version cache directory (under $XDG_CACHE_HOME or ~/.cache) and installs node_modules there. The sidecar then runs from that cache copy, so Node resolves playwright next to it.

Either way, the directory bin/www-playwright-setup writes to is the same one the transport checks at start, so a successful bin/www-playwright-setup clears the DependenciesMissing error. Run bin/www-playwright-setup once after each zef install or upgrade.

What happens when a step is missing#

  • If the npm package is not installed, starting the sidecar throws X::WWW::Playwright::DependenciesMissing, pointing back at bin/www-playwright-setup.
  • If the browser binary is not installed, launch throws X::WWW::Playwright::BrowserNotInstalled, also pointing at bin/www-playwright-setup.