[Regression]: install-deps --dry-run can no longer be used to generate install script

[kelunik]

Last Good Version

1.59.1

First Bad Version

1.60.0 / b25fbe4

Steps to reproduce

Steps to reproduce:

npx -y playwright@1.60.0 install-deps --dry-run > /playwright-install-deps.sh
cat /playwright-install-deps.sh

Broken by: b25fbe4

Expected behavior

Previously, the output has been the install commands, which could then be run in another container / later stage.

Actual behavior

Prints missing package information now in a human readable but no longer executable format.

Additional context

We avoid globally installing node / npm in the container image, so we used to have a separate playwright-build container that just prints the install command for the system dependencies. This no longer works now.

Environment

System:
OS: Linux 6.12 Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) 12 (bookworm)
CPU: (12) arm64 unknown
Memory: 7.11 GB / 7.75 GB
Container: Yes
Binaries:
Node: 22.22.3 - /usr/local/bin/node
Yarn: 1.22.22 - /usr/local/bin/yarn
npm: 10.9.8 - /usr/local/bin/npm
Languages:
Bash: 5.2.15 - /usr/bin/bash

[dgozman]

@kelunik Thank you for the issue. Unfortunately, output was never meant to be executable. I do believe we still print all the required information, so with a little bit of processing you can generate the command anyway.

Note that Node.js is required for Playwright in any case, so we do not really support a workflow where node is not installed.

Closing as won't fix. Thanks again for filing.