Puppeteer needs environment variables set

[dreeves]

Desiderata

• Clarify when/why setting these environment variables is needed (are both needed?)
• Decide if we can make it happen automatically
• Either do that or else document it in the README
• If we want to be good citizens, improve the Stack Overflow answers that come up when you Google the error because currently they send you on wild goose chases

---

I'm not sure if this is specific to macOS with M1 chips or what but I currently have to do the following (HT Adam!) before running npm start for the Beebrain server (aka bbserver aka jsbrain_server):

export PUPPETEER_SKIP_CHROMIUM_DOWNLOAD=true
export PUPPETEER_EXECUTABLE_PATH=`which chromium`

Replicata

1. Take a fresh M1 mac
2. Do all the things the README says to do, npm update, etc
3. Go to the Beebrain server directory (jsbrain_server, which wants to be renamed to bbserver, btw)
4. Run npm start

Expectata

$ npm start

> bbserver@2022.05.04 start
> PORT=8777 node jsbrain_server.js

Starting puppeteer with headless CHROME.
Started Puppeteer with pid 95325 and product chrome
(1): Initialized renderer.
(1): Listen port on localhost 8777.

Resultata

$ npm start

> bbserver@2021.03.16 start
> PORT=8777 node jsbrain_server.js

Starting puppeteer with headless CHROME.
Fail to initialze renderer. Error: spawn Unknown system error -86
    at ChildProcess.spawn (node:internal/child_process:412:11)
    at Object.spawn (node:child_process:698:9)
    at BrowserRunner.start ([...]road/jsbrain_server/node_modules/puppeteer/lib/cjs/puppeteer/node/BrowserRunner.js:95:34)
    at ChromeLauncher.launch ([...]road/jsbrain_server/node_modules/puppeteer/lib/cjs/puppeteer/node/Launcher.js:113:16)
    at async create ([...]road/jsbrain_server/renderer.js:337:11) {
  errno: -86,
  code: 'Unknown system error -86',
  syscall: 'spawn'
}

Cognata

• New steps in README for M1 macs #257
• https://github.com/beeminder/road/blob/master/README.md

Verbata: dev env, headless chrome, opaque node errors, bbserver, local dev, apple silicon,

[dreeves]

PS: It's not every time I reboot my laptop but I've had to repeat the following to get automon to work again:

sudo pip3 install requests
sudo pip3 install watchdog

I definitely have to set the two environment variables every time I reboot, or use a fresh bash session I guess.

(It's kinda black magic to me, embarrassingly.)

[dreeves]

It seems this was the case for an old version of puppeteer (13.7.0) but is not needed with more modern versions. So I think this gissue is closeable.