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Document the per-browser cost of with-deps #2

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21 changes: 20 additions & 1 deletion README.md
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Expand Up @@ -109,6 +109,25 @@ key. Browser binaries are tied to their Playwright release.
`with-deps: auto` installs browser system dependencies on Linux and skips that
step on macOS and Windows. Use `true` or `false` to override this behavior.

Whether skipping is safe depends entirely on the browser. On a `ubuntu-latest`
runner, `--with-deps` installs:

| Browser | Packages installed | What they are |
|----------------------|--------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| `chrome`, `chromium` | 9 | fonts only — every library is already on the image |
| `firefox` | 40 | fonts plus codecs (`libavcodec60`, `libopus0`, `libdav1d7`, `libmp3lame0`, `libtheora0`, …) |
| `webkit` | 181 | fonts plus `glib-networking` and the full GStreamer stack |

So `with-deps: false` is cheap and safe for a **chromium-only** suite: it saves
around 12s per job and the only thing you give up are fonts for non-Latin text,
which matters solely if your tests render CJK/Cyrillic/Thai content or take
screenshots. Do not skip it for `firefox` or `webkit` — those are real runtime
libraries and the browser will fail to launch without them.

These counts come from GitHub-hosted runner images. Self-hosted runners and
container jobs generally need `--with-deps` for every browser, including
chromium.

## Outputs

The action exposes two outputs:
Expand All @@ -122,7 +141,7 @@ The action exposes two outputs:
|----------------------|----------|------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| `browsers` | `chrome` | `chrome`, `chromium`, `firefox`, `webkit`, `msedge`, `all` | `msedge` only on Windows runners |
| `playwright-version` | `latest` | Any valid npm specifier (for the `playwright` package) | Pin an exact version for reproducible CI. Use `latest` only when intentionally testing new upstream releases. |
| `with-deps` | `auto` | `true`, `false`, `auto` | `auto` appends Playwright's `--with-deps` flag on Linux runners. |
| `with-deps` | `auto` | `true`, `false`, `auto` | `auto` appends Playwright's `--with-deps` flag on Linux runners. Safe to set `false` for a chromium-only suite; see above. |
| `browsers-path` | | Directory path | Exports `PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH` so downloads land in your cache. Leave blank for Playwright defaults (`~/.cache/ms-playwright`, `%LOCALAPPDATA%\ms-playwright`, etc.) |

## Action version
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