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.