Browser-Extension-MinVer

Description

Browser-Extension-MinVer provides a Perl script to find minimum browser version which supports a certain browser extension. It does this by searching browser extension strings from the extension's JavaScript files.

Requirements

perl >= 5.22
Module::Build
Readonly
File::ShareDir

You need browser compatibility data from browser-compat-data repository.

Install

perl Build.PL
./Build
sudo ./Build install

Usage

# Find version from all .js prefixed files from the directory.
min_ext_ver.pl extension_src_dir

# Print also the used APIs.
min_ext_ver.pl -v extension_src_dir

# Print also files and lines where the API is used.
min_ext_ver.pl -vv extension_src_dir

# Find version from the file for only Firefox and Chrome.
min_ext_ver.pl -b firefox,chr content_script.js

# For updating the browser compatibility data.
# First clone https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/
parse_compatibility_table.pl PATH_TO_CLONED_REPO/webextensions/api/ > extension_compatibility_table.txt
# Copy it to where the previous version was installed.
sudo cp extension_compatibility_table.txt /usr/local/share/.../

Limitations

• Only browser extension API is checked, not the rest of the JavaScript used in the extension.

• If something from the Extension API is used conditionally, it can't be detected.

• If there's whitespace between namespace and a method, i.e. chrome.storage. local. set(...), think newlines.

• If part of an API is stored in a variable and it's called using that variable.

• Parameters to functions aren't checked whether they are supported.