Deprecate the Lighthouse Chrome extension

[paulirish]

The Chrome extension has a number of challenging issues. It's similar to DevTools as a client, but we can't have nice integration like "view trace" or "click through on node to Elements panel"

Also bugs like #4451 (distorted screenshots)

We've wanted to drop the Chrome extension for a while.

The proposal is that hitting the Browser Action icon would just immediately open DevTools Audits panel.

Implementation-wise: we'll need either protocol-level support to make this happen, an extension API that's exclusive to the LH chrome extension.

[connorjclark]

Implementation-wise: we'll need either protocol-level support to make this happen, an extension API that's exclusive to the LH chrome extension.

Extension API seemed the most straightforward. I'm not sure how to make an API private to an extension, but maybe activeTab / tab permissions are enough?

Got a work in progress. It needs tests, and perhaps a slight consolidation of older code.

chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(tab) {
  chrome.tabs.openDevTools(undefined, 'audits2');
});

I use DevTools's showPanel to open the Audits panel. It's unfortunate that it's named audits2, but we can change that right?

[benjamingr]

As an extension author I would really prefer fixing the extension API to support three things

[benjamingr]

:(