crx-dev-server

A dev "server" for Chrome extensions with hot reload capabilities.

Installation

$ npm i --save-dev crx-dev-server

Usage

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

How does it work?

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.

Motivation

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.