Screenshots and traces are written into site-packages when keywords are called from Python outside a Robot Framework run

[aaltat]

When keywords are called directly from Python, without a Robot Framework run, outputdir is the relative string "." (Browser/browser.py:455). Artefacts whose paths are handed to the Node side as relative strings are then resolved against the Node process's working directory, which is the wrapper directory — so they land inside the installed package instead of the user's working directory.

Under a robot run this cannot happen: outputdir comes from ${OUTPUTDIR} and is absolute. Verified.

Reproduce

from Browser import Browser

browser = Browser()
browser.new_browser("webkit", headless=True)
browser.new_page("https://robotframework-browser.org")
print(browser.take_screenshot())
browser.close_browser("ALL")

Observed:

browser/screenshot/robotframework-browser-screenshot-1.png     <- returned path

• The returned path is relative and does not exist relative to the caller's working directory.
• An empty ./browser/screenshot/ is created in the caller's working directory by the Python side.
• The actual PNG is written to <site-packages>/Browser/wrapper/browser/screenshot/robotframework-browser-screenshot-1.png.

The rule

Anything Python resolves to an absolute path before sending it over gRPC is fine. Anything sent as a relative string is resolved by Node against Browser/wrapper.

Affected

Artefact	Source
Screenshots	returned path is relative and wrong
tracing=True trace zip	Browser/keywords/playwright_state.py:874-877 — no .resolve()
Trace temp/<uuid>/ working files	Browser/keywords/playwright_state.py:911
Save Storage State	Browser/keywords/playwright_state.py:1720-1722 — from source, not run
Node V8 coverage output	Browser/playwright.py:96 — from source, not run

Not affected

Artefact	Why
playwright-log.txt	opened by Python itself, Browser/playwright.py:234-235
Video	explicitly resolved, Browser/keywords/playwright_state.py:948-960

An explicit tracing=Path("x.zip") is also fine — lines 878-880 do resolve it. Only the tracing=True path is affected.

Cause

Browser/browser.py:455 sets _output_dir = ".", and Browser/browser.py:795-798 returns it unchanged when there is no execution context. The Node process is started with cwd=self._browser_wrapper_dir (Browser/playwright.py:280, passed to Popen at :104).

Possible fix

Making the default absolute at construction time was probed in-process (Browser._output_dir = str(Path.cwd()) before constructing). It fixes the screenshot path, the trace zip and the trace temp directory, makes the returned paths absolute, and moves nothing to a new wrong place. It does not fix recordHar, which never passes through outputdir at all — filed separately.

Environment

Browser 20.3.0, Robot Framework 7.4.1, Python 3.14.7, macOS, webkit.