Fix yt-dlp JavaScript runtime by installing deno

[Amdrel]

Description

As of yt-dlp version 2025.11.12 an external JavaScript runtime is now required for full YouTube support. We have been having occasional issues with videos being downloaded in a lower resolution than was available, at least since October. Missing the JS runtime is a likely cause of this and the problem will only get worse with time.

yt-dlp recommends that deno is used as the JavaScript runtime. deno can be installed with npm or via a shell script. I opted for the former approach since that would allow for a declarative and idempotent way of ensuring deno is present. node can be used with an option override, but only the CLI option for this is documented and I couldn't find any code examples of anyone doing this. The yt-dlp team recommends against using node instead of deno if at all possible.

Changes

• Install node v24 LTS and npm from the NodeSource Debian repository
  • The version of node in the base Debian repository is v18 and cannot be used since it is no longer supported and the installation of deno with an unsupported version could potentially break in the near future
• Use npm and the puppet/nodejs module to install deno using npm

Deployment

There are a couple of new puppet modules that need to be installed for the manifest to apply successfully. There is no Puppetfile in this repository for me to add modules in, so I assume that has to be done some other way.

These are the modules that need to be added:

• puppet/nodejs
  • puppet/nodejs is needed to install node and npm, which is needed to install deno
• puppetlabs/apt
  • puppetlabs/apt is an indirect dependency of puppet/nodejs that's needed to add a new apt repository

Confirmation

You can confirm the runtime is being detected by running the following command on the instances:

yt-dlp -v

If you see [debug] JS runtimes: deno-2.6.4 in the output (or any other version) then it's setup correctly. I tested this in a Debian Bookworm container and it picked it up as expected for me.