Enable extension developer setting in Chrome automatically in dev mode

[aklinker1]

Feature Request

When running wxt to develop and extension, it's really annoying to have to enable developer mode every time to inspect the different JS contexts of your extension. We should be able to enable it automatically via CLI flags? I assume the switch is just a preference that we can control via CLI flags.

Is your feature request related to a bug?

#135

What are the alternatives?

N/A

Additional context

Also a problem with Edge, so we should add the setting to edge and other chromium browsers as well. Hopefully they're all the same internal preference...

[aklinker1]

This doesn't seem possible. But you can enable it for all profiles, including new ones that WXT creates during dev mode:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32280949/enable-developer-mode-extension-for-chrome-browser-using-cmd#answer-32284345

[aklinker1]

I kept looking into this, and it is possible, but it's blocked by GoogleChrome/chrome-launcher#323.

web-ext allows passing a custom chromeLaunch option, which I can use to apply custom prefs.

wxt/src/core/runners/web-ext.ts

Line 56 in 89d15ba

runner = await webExt.default.cmd.run(finalConfig, options);

https://github.com/mozilla/web-ext/blob/a83f4c55a8fe0d2323d2d17ffbfa1754ec32f49c/src/extension-runners/chromium.js#L43

import { launch } from 'chrome-launcher';

await webExt.default.cmd.run({
  ...finalConfig,
  chromiumLaunch: (options) => launch({ ...options, prefs: { ... } }),
}, options); 

[aklinker1]

Can't pass the custom chromiumLaunch into the JS API... Need to wait for web-ext to add support, or add the feature to my fork. I'd rather contribute this to web-ext though.

mozilla/web-ext#2899

[aklinker1]

This appears to be broken again

[aklinker1]

Need to figure out what the new preference is. Old preference:

https://github.com/wxt-dev/web-ext-run/blob/a5d1e24b528911eb3b7d93439c45cc30094682be/src/extension-runners/chromium.js#L34-L36

Here's where we can set the new one if we find it:

wxt/packages/wxt/src/core/runners/web-ext.ts

Lines 96 to 108 in 90bb145

	const DEFAULT_CHROMIUM_PREFS = {
	devtools: {
	synced_preferences_sync_disabled: {
	// Remove content scripts from sourcemap debugger ignore list so stack traces
	// and log locations show up properly, see:
	// https://github.com/wxt-dev/wxt/issues/236#issuecomment-1915364520
	skipContentScripts: false,
	// Was renamed at some point, see:
	// https://github.com/wxt-dev/wxt/issues/912#issuecomment-2284288171
	'skip-content-scripts': false,
	},
	},
	};