feat(linux): add community support for Rocky Linux 9 / RHEL 9 (Chromium)

[Dev-iL]

Fixes: #37812 (partially)

Summary

• Adds rhel9-x64 and rhel9-arm64 platform detection via /etc/os-release ID and ID_LIKE fields; covers Rocky Linux, RHEL, AlmaLinux, CentOS Stream, and Oracle Linux at version ≥ 9 (Fedora explicitly excluded)
• install-deps chromium now uses dnf/yum with EPEL enablement on RHEL-family hosts, including proper sudo/su privilege escalation for non-root users
• Adds Chromium download paths for rhel9; Firefox and WebKit remain unsupported (undefined) on RHEL — only Chromium is community-supported
• RHEL 8 and earlier produce an actionable error message instead of a confusing apt-get failure
• Adds dep-generation tooling (process_rhel.sh, list_dependencies_rhel.js) and a CI workflow running install + headless smoke test inside a rockylinux:9 container
• All existing ubuntu/debian code paths are unchanged

Manual testing

Verified end-to-end inside a rockylinux:9 Docker container.

1. Pack playwright-core:

npm run build
node utils/pack_package.js playwright-core /tmp/pw-core.tar.gz

2. Write the test script to /tmp:

cat > /tmp/test-rhel9.js << 'EOF'
const { chromium } = require('playwright-core');
(async () => {
  const browser = await chromium.launch({ headless: true });
  const page = await browser.newPage();

  // Navigation + title
  await page.goto('data:text/html,<title>Rocky Linux 9</title><h1 id=h>Playwright on Rocky Linux 9</h1><input id=i><div id=r></div>');
  console.log('title:', await page.title());

  // DOM interaction
  await page.fill('#i', 'hello from rhel9');
  await page.evaluate(() => { document.getElementById('r').textContent = document.getElementById('i').value; });
  const result = await page.textContent('#r');
  console.log('DOM result:', result);
  if (result !== 'hello from rhel9') throw new Error('DOM interaction failed');

  // JS evaluation
  const ua = await page.evaluate(() => navigator.userAgent);
  console.log('UA:', ua.includes('HeadlessChrome') ? 'HeadlessChrome confirmed' : ua);

  // Screenshot
  await page.screenshot({ path: '/mnt/rhel9-screenshot.png' });
  console.log('Screenshot saved to /mnt/rhel9-screenshot.png');

  await browser.close();
  console.log('PASS: all checks passed on Rocky Linux 9');
})().catch(e => { console.error(e); process.exit(1); });
EOF

3. Run the full install + functional test:

docker run --rm -v /tmp:/mnt rockylinux:9 sh -c '
  set -e
  dnf module enable -y nodejs:20
  dnf install -y nodejs
  mkdir /app && cd /app && npm init -y
  npm i /mnt/pw-core.tar.gz

  node_modules/.bin/playwright-core install-deps chromium
  node_modules/.bin/playwright-core install chromium

  cp /mnt/test-rhel9.js /app/
  node /app/test-rhel9.js
'

Resulting in:

title: Rocky Linux 9
DOM result: hello from rhel9
UA: HeadlessChrome confirmed
Screenshot saved to /mnt/rhel9-screenshot.png
PASS: all checks passed on Rocky Linux 9

Future Work

• Add more OS variants/versions
• Add Firefox & WebKit support

[Dev-iL]

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