Error when trying `run-workers` with combination of `channel` using playwright helper.

Start by reproducing the issue in a demo CodeceptJS project using the Playwright helper, channel: 'msedge', and npx codeceptjs run-workers 2 on win32. Inspect the run-workers child-process environment handling and verify that the channel browser launches successfully during parallel execution.

What are you trying to achieve?

When I use Playwright driver along with channel, and also use run-workers, I get error like the browser exe file is not present at specific location and browser cannot be launched.

How to reproduce?

1. Create a demo codeceptjs project with playwright as driver.
2. In codecept.conf.js file add the channel property inside playwright object (add any property from here) OR use below code.

const { setHeadlessWhen, setCommonPlugins } = require('@codeceptjs/configure');
// turn on headless mode when running with HEADLESS=true environment variable
// export HEADLESS=true && npx codeceptjs run
setHeadlessWhen(process.env.HEADLESS);

// enable all common plugins https://github.com/codeceptjs/configure#setcommonplugins
setCommonPlugins();

/** @type {CodeceptJS.MainConfig} */
exports.config = {
  tests: './*_test.js',
  output: './output',
  helpers: {
    Playwright: {
      browser: 'chromium',
      url: 'http://localhost',
      show: true,
      channel: 'msedge',
    }
  },
  include: {
    I: './steps_file.js'
  },
  name: 'demo-codecept'
}

Command for execution

npx codeceptjs run-workers 2

Possible resolution way and reason for Error

The error comes when child processes are created for the parallel execution using run-workers. For windows operating system, the env variable are case-insensitive, which means process.env['PROGRAMFILES(X86)'] and process.env['ProgramFiles(x86)'] would produce same output. But inside the child process, only writing exact case only produces result. ex. process.env['ProgramFiles(x86)'] will produce correct output and anything other produces undefined.
Because of this it is not able to find the correct path at which the browser exe files are present.

Details

• CodeceptJS version: 3.6.6
• NodeJS Version: 22.11.0
• Operating System: win32
• playwright: 1.49.0