A dev "server" for Chrome extensions with hot reload capabilities.
$ npm i --save-dev crx-dev-server
By default, this package will look for a manifest.json
definition in process.cwd()
.
$ crx-dev-server
If you wish to use a manifest.json
from a different location, simply specify the path via the --manifest
command-line option:
$ crx-dev-server --manifest=/path/to/your/manifest.json
This package injects a background script (see crx-hotreload) into your project's manifest.json
that watches for file changes and auto-reloads your extension when they occur.
The background script (hot-reload.js
) is copied into your project alongside your manifest.json
(Chrome requires content and background scripts be local and relative to your manifest.json
), then removed when the server is stopped.
I love the work that went into crx-hotreload
as it makes my life easier as an extension developer, but I wanted a way to keep the background script definition out of my manifest.json
so I could ship the extension without dev assets.
You can achieve something similar with a CI/CD pipeline, but that isn't necessarily applicable to every project.