[Feature Request]: use CHROME_BIN if present as a source for configuration.executablePath

Bug description

Currently Puppeteer forces the use of PUPPETEER_EXECUTABLE_PATH,

I think it’s subpar to name it _PATH either way, but the convention for images that also must host selenium, or protractor, karma, or other utilities is CHROME_BIN. I would suggest using or adopting this convention, or at the least sourcing from the environmental variable CHROME_BIN.

This request is to add CHROME_BIN to this https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer/blob/4bf338b26d6cceae2dc718074ed9839e905905f2/packages/puppeteer/src/getConfiguration.ts#L49

Puppeteer version

current

Node.js version

current

npm version

current

What operating system are you seeing the problem on?

Linux

Configuration file

No response

Relevant log output

No response

[OrKoN]

So we think the cost is too high to enable this by default given that it’s easy for anyone to re-map one variable to the puppeteer-specific one. The only opportunity to ship it would by making this new behaviour an opt-in mechanism: e.g., PUPPETEER_USE_CHROME_BIN_CONVENTION=true would make Puppeteer look into CHROME_BIN & FIREFOX_BIN variables.

[EvanCarroll]

Opinion on this

Cool, I’ll close the issue then but I expect to see it pop up if CHROME_BIN or FIREFOX_BIN is set I’m going to guess 100% of people do not_want_ these utilities downloaded it so we’re at an impasse and have a different understanding. Even in this case where it is set in image creation, the reason is because no one is going to want their image to download a newer copy. And if they do want a newer copy, what they’d do is pull down ubuntu-latest, layer a newer chrome in the same place by rerunning the same google-chrome.sh and committing the container to a new baked image.

Images for runners are supposed to be fully baked. If they’re not the result isn’t reproducible. The idea that a testing framework has an environment not known until execution that based on the executable on Chrome’s server seems like an un-ideal defalt.

Remember, if CHROME_BIN and FIREFOX_BIN are NOT set nothing changes.

Other potential solution

I mean if they do want that… maybe some do. They should be setting the flag to enable the download regardless of CHROME_BIN set. For example, let’s say an image was baked with

CHROME_BIN=/foo/bar/baz
FIREFOX_BIN=/foo/bar/qux

What is puppeteer

• default to CHROME_BIN
• could be run with PUPPETEER_PRODUCT=firefox puppeteer to use to FIREFOX_BIN
• could download as it currently does with PUPPETEER_FORCE_DOWNLOAD=1

Regardless I’m good now, I’m just trying to save everyone using this stuff in a pipeline at a company from running into these problems.