On apt releases newer than the bundled Playwright recognizes (Ubuntu 26.04,
Debian 14, and future distros), 'npx playwright install --with-deps chromium'
hangs uninterruptibly at 'Installing Playwright Chromium with system
dependencies' because Playwright's resolver maps the host to a platform with
no download build (#35166).
Wrap every installer Playwright call in run_playwright_install(), which tries
the native install first and, only if it fails or times out, retries once with
PLAYWRIGHT_HOST_PLATFORM_OVERRIDE pinned to the newest known build
(ubuntu24.04-<arch>). This is the escape hatch Playwright's maintainers bless
for unrecognized platforms (microsoft/playwright#33434).
Try-native-first (not a hardcoded distro/version table) is deliberate:
- Self-correcting — when Playwright already supports the host (e.g. Ubuntu
26.04 on Playwright >=1.61) the first attempt succeeds and the override is
never applied, so we never force a mismatched-glibc build onto a release
Playwright handles correctly (microsoft/playwright#35114).
- Zero-maintenance — new distro releases work the moment Playwright adds them.
- Covers Debian 14+ and future releases, not just Ubuntu 26.04.
An operator-set PLAYWRIGHT_HOST_PLATFORM_OVERRIDE is always respected (applied
to the first attempt; retry skipped). Non-x64/arm64 arches have no fallback
build and skip the retry.
Refs #35166
a28fe788a6