playwright-java
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[Feature] Allow to opt out driver installation when running as a client
This applies to a typical production environment, where a service hosts browsers for general purposes that different client applications can use. Giving clients an option not to bundle drivers has a few nice properties:
- Less dependency and easier to be integrated. Packaging a different runtime and drivers can be difficult if existing tooling/platform/dependencies are not compatible, not to mention upgrade. With a thin client approach, only server needs to worry about all the dependencies, clients are just pure Java, Python libraries can be integrated anywhere.
- Avoid leaking unmanaged resources, in the Java case, those outside of Jvm due to ProcessBuilder. That improves reliability.
This is a great library, we were very happy with the result we see during prototyping, but hesitated when productionizing it. Removing barriers like these could significantly help the reach.