[BUG] Exception thrown when using playwright in a single-file published program

Context:

• Playwright Version: 1.24.1
• Operating System: Windows 10
• .NET version: .NET 6
• Browser: All
• Extra:

Code Snippet

See code to reproduce this bug here: https://github.com/resurge/PlaywrightSingleFilePathError

Describe the bug When publishing a project as single file and running the published executable the following error will be shown:

Unhandled exception. System.ArgumentException: The path is empty. (Parameter 'path')
   at System.IO.Path.GetFullPath(String path)
   at System.IO.FileInfo..ctor(String originalPath, String fullPath, String fileName, Boolean isNormalized)
   at System.IO.FileInfo..ctor(String fileName)
   at Microsoft.Playwright.Helpers.Driver.GetExecutablePath() in /_/src/Playwright/Helpers/Driver.cs:line 41
   at Microsoft.Playwright.Transport.StdIOTransport.GetProcess() in /_/src/Playwright/Transport/StdIOTransport.cs:line 119
   at Microsoft.Playwright.Transport.StdIOTransport..ctor() in /_/src/Playwright/Transport/StdIOTransport.cs:line 44
   at Microsoft.Playwright.Playwright.CreateAsync() in /_/src/Playwright/Playwright.cs:line 44
   at Program.<Main>$(String[] args) in C:\Users\jeroe\Documents\repos\PlaywrightSingleFilePathError\Program.cs:line 3
   at Program.<Main>(String[] args)

I would expect the program to behave the same way as a regular Debug or Release build.
But choosing to publish as a single file causes the behaviour of the executable to change. (And not work)

The following tickets were about the same bug but were closed because of no code to reproduce:

• https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-dotnet/issues/1952
• https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-dotnet/issues/1527

EDIT: Some other issues I found relating to this bug:

• https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-dotnet/issues/1069 Not sure how the solution here works because Playwright.CreateAsync doesn´t accept parameters.
• https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-dotnet/issues/1274 This ticket is closed with comment “not supported”, but no reason is given as to why not.

[jeroenpelgrims]

While that seems to be the initial reason Playwright was created it is used for more that that.
I myself use it for scraping or transforming html to PDF. I would like to be able to share a single executable with users instead of having to make a zip file or installer as release.

I agree more with the description that is written in the README of this repo.
(Browser automation in general, not just specifically for testing)

Playwright for .NET is the official language port of Playwright, the library to automate Chromium, Firefox and WebKit with a single API.

The linked issues show that there is a need for this type of publishing.
EDIT: I found some more tickets about people using it this way, I added them above.

[vmeganathan81]

@mxschmitt any update on this open issue?