"Error authenticating account" in editor

[fregante]

I'm not sure if this is a DX issue or if it happens in the wild too. Classifying it as DX for now.

---

Screen.Recording.2.mov

How to replicate

1. Build the extension locally (npm run watch)
2. Let web-ext reload the background page (web-ext run)
3. Open the dev tools on any website

Possible reasons

• The background page might have completely failed to load (due to a a build error or runtime/init error for example)
  • open the background page’s console to double-check
• The extension might not have reloaded fully (e.g. the background page loaded by Chrome did not execute any code 🤷‍♂️ )
  • Reload the extension manually by clicking the reload button in chrome://extensions
• The token might be wrong or provided to the wrong SERVICE_URL
  • Clear token in PixieBrix’ options and login again

Suggested solution

• Debug the auto reloading and report back to web-ext
• Show a better message to the user

Possibly related

• Background page is not automatically reloaded  #945
• Cleanly handle context invalidation (extension updates/reloads) #627

cc @MMirandi because you mentioned the issue on Slack

[fregante]

I haven't seen this in a while