[Migration] support for Manifest v3

[emorling]

Any plans on upgrading this to work with manifest V3? Or a list of manual changes that need to be done? It doesn't seem to work out of the box for V3.

[sephentos]

any update?

[emorling]

I think this is the best documentation on what an upgrade från V2 to V3 implies:

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/intro/mv3-migration/

[abhijithvijayan]

@emorling i dont think manifest v3 is being pushed to firefox anytime soon.

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/05/27/manifest-v3-update/&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjzjvWNw8jxAhWyzDgGHdBMDxsQFjACegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw0PczMyb3bHfV4NeFcKdH8F

I will not be implementing this until a beta release from these browser vendors are out and they provide viable migration guides for both.

Background scripts are now being replaced with workers, so I dont want to make partial support to chome and no support to firefox.

Probably its a good call to wait. And I would like to see some open source extensions already working on this hell of a migration.

[abhijithvijayan]

Google is so arrogant with their release of manifest v3. This might be a good time to see what is to be done for the benefit of Firefox too. Ideas are welcome.

ref:

• https://notifications.google.com/g/p/AD-FnEwrN93eXn0b5AP95dRBU0YwudmB9ByX1YS7DC_Ggy8__nw8iKBYTbZaU-HMtjrrC-Rw2MQujhrKNQ22d-UeyNE10L-2UA8Wr2dRGPoR3OxHr6b2IFwkGHQqFRuDpKplIqcD9ozPQQ09YoRM_G9e22s
• https://notifications.google.com/g/p/AD-FnExwAlrttqBskkkpJx_UHy4EaBCASJ424guQp5S-piDtDeqB9gmZo_uijXEaQ5n6q4boIyPuGgwqvxSPV4FG5j8SHAAq7Q_E9NXiNPtHUpy7uNa_Jdw
• https://notifications.google.com/g/p/AD-FnEy8FV93DiKUfek3RICrW7-nmy3jrmWYE7N_ddozRw1O4ffKy2fih1IMDtkVbS-QQ1jxzzMDhZok_D2x-tbuEwJHMbItsDi__die51fwHak6_3YIxENSNSVBLMo6xYXDHQ

[abhijithvijayan]

Update:

• The underlying polyfill by Mozilla has an issue open with respect to support for Chrome's v3 APIs
  see: Support Chrome manifest v3 APIs mozilla/webextension-polyfill#329 (comment)

• The initial steps to be done for the manifest.json mentioned in migration guide can be accomplished by vendor prefixed keys (docs]
  eg:

         "__chrome|opera|edge__manifest_version": 3,
         "__firefox__manifest_version": 2
  

  • Note: if you are going with keeping Opera/Edge/Other Chromium based browsers in sync with that of Chrome, the keys would have to be adjusted like __chrome|opera|edge__ & __firefox__. This depends on the browser backward compatibility you are intending to accomplish.

• Dropping support for older chrome/edge/opera/brave versions by modifying targets field in .babelrc file

   	  "targets": {
               "chrome": "88",
               "firefox": "52",
               "opera": "74",
               "edge": "88"
        }
  

• and also manifest.json should be updated

       "__firefox__browser_specific_settings": {
  	        "gecko": {
  	          "id": "{some_id}",
  	          "strict_min_version": "52.0"
  	        }
       },
       "__chrome__minimum_chrome_version": "88",
       "__opera__minimum_opera_version": "74",
  

  • Note: chrome can be of version 88 and opera can be of 74 (which has Chromium 88), for edge i think 88 is needed as from what i saw on wikipedia, edge keeps version in sync with that of chromium's.

• Deprecated APIs will be rendered useless for users of Chromium-based browsers(before v87) after January 2023

• using service workers for chrome can be adopted by providing a separate background script(using manifest vendor prefixed key)

   "background": {
         "__firefox__scripts": [
           "js/background.bundle.js"
         ],
         "__chrome|opera|edge__service_worker": "js/bgServiceWorker.js",
  },
  

  • Note: new file entry (bgServiceWorker: path.join(sourcePath, 'Background', 'service-worker.ts'),) has to be added to

    web-extension-starter/webpack.config.js

    Line 60 in a3459c3

    entry: {

    and also source/Background/service-worker.ts has to have all the logic for the chromium based browsers
  • If you have a better approach like either by merging the logic between APIs for chromium 87 and that of Firefox, feel free to use a single bundle js for that.
  • https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/migrating_to_service_workers/#manifest

I think this would help in the migration, If I get some time, I will test this myself. As of now all the extensions that i have is already on chrome store which means I have an year more for the migration. But for the new extensions created after January 17, migration is very much needed for chrome team to accept the extension into their store.

Hope this helps!

Like always, contributions & support are welcome from anyone.