playwright: [REGRESSION]: Pull request #12877 prevents the library from being used on any linux distro that is not Ubuntu

Context:

GOOD Playwright Version: < 1.21.0 (1.20.2, etc)
BAD Playwright Version: 1.21.0
Operating System: Linux
Extra: while we are using Docker images based on buster slim, this is applicable to any Linux distro that isn’t ubuntu based (debian, possibly arch too)

Code Snippet

Run npx playwright install-deps chrome in a non-ubuntu environment (debian for instance)

Describe the bug

https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/pull/12877 was merged in order to “solve” issues related to users of Debian that couldn’t install the required dependencies due to missing packages (usually fonts which can be solved by including the debian non-free source list), however this prevents any users of a Linux distro that is not ubuntu based from using the library.

I believe the PR should be reverted or changed to emit an actual warning instead of a hard error, or a way to ignore the check should be added, as artificially limiting the library just for Ubuntu/Linux Mint users doesn’t sound right.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 2 years ago
Reactions: 5
Comments: 22 (3 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

revert(#12877): chore: print error if install-deps is used != ubuntu Reason: turns out Debian Buster requires just one source list to install `ttf-ubuntu-font-family` font. All other dependencies ar... — committed to aslushnikov/playwright by aslushnikov 2 years ago
revert(#12877): chore: print error if install-deps is used != ubuntu (#13536) Reason: turns out Debian Buster requires just one source list to install `ttf-ubuntu-font-family` font. All other dep... — committed to microsoft/playwright by aslushnikov 2 years ago
cherry-pick(#13536): revert: chore: print error if install-deps is used != ubuntu Reason: turns out Debian Buster requires just one source list to install `ttf-ubuntu-font-family` font. All other de... — committed to aslushnikov/playwright by aslushnikov 2 years ago
cherry-pick(#13536): revert: chore: print error if install-deps is used != ubuntu (#13539) Reason: turns out Debian Buster requires just one source list to install `ttf-ubuntu-font-family` font. ... — committed to microsoft/playwright by aslushnikov 2 years ago
Update dependency @playwright/test to v1.28.1 (#860) [![Mend Renovate](https://app.renovatebot.com/images/banner.svg)](https://renovatebot.com) This PR contains the following updates: | Package | C... — committed to ttbud/ttbud by renovate[bot] 2 years ago
fix base image (https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/13530) — committed to jwoglom/remarkable-substack by jwoglom 10 months ago

Most upvoted comments

So this is a debian with an extra sourceList:

echo "deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian buster main non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/fonts.list

This one adds the missing ttf-ubuntu-font-family font. Besides this font, all other dependencies are installable for both Chromium & Firefox; both browsers also seem to be functioning well.

aslushnikov on Apr 13, 2022

Encountering this issue building from the official node:18 image, which I would think is an image in widespread use.

stefaneg on Jun 19, 2023

The problem for me is that in my Dockerfile I use FROM python:3.10. Unfortunately, the image changed from Debian Bullseye to Bookworm. If I just use FROM python:3.10-bullseye everything works fine again.

medihack on Jun 15, 2023

Update: Adding echo "deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian buster main non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/fonts.list to my Dockerfile as suggested by @aslushnikov fixed this for me.

It installs ~350MB of extra packages (that I don’t need) but it solves the immediate problem. I tried different combinations but this is the only one that worked

maquchizi on Jun 15, 2023

this seems to just have started happening again mainly around “E: Package ‘xfonts-cyrillic’ has no installation candidate”

david-engelmann on Jun 14, 2023

@david-engelmann please file a new issue with details to help us reproduce & debug.

aslushnikov on Jun 14, 2023

🤦 totally forgot ubuntu released 22 recently… Thanks!!

knaitas on Apr 25, 2022

Still receiving this in 1.21.0:

image: ubuntu:latest

$ npx playwright install-deps
npm WARN exec The following package was not found and will be installed: playwright
Installing Ubuntu dependencies...
Hit:1 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-security InRelease
Hit:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy InRelease
Hit:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates InRelease
Hit:4 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-backports InRelease
Reading package lists...
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
Package ttf-ubuntu-font-family is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
Package ttf-unifont is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
  fonts-unifont
E: Package 'ttf-unifont' has no installation candidate
E: Package 'ttf-ubuntu-font-family' has no installation candidate
E: Unable to locate package libenchant1c2a
E: Unable to locate package libicu66
E: Unable to locate package libvpx6
E: Unable to locate package libwebp6
Failed to install browser dependencies

This image ubuntu:latest is probably pointing to Ubuntu 22.04 which Playwright’s team might not have test it yet as it was released a few days ago.

ltsuda on Apr 25, 2022

@vladfrangu revert has landed; we’ll publish a 1.21.1 with the revert by the end of the week. For now, you can use

npx playwright@1.20 install-deps chrome chromium

as a work-around.

Thanks for the heads-up!

aslushnikov on Apr 13, 2022